---
title: "Update Queries without changing RecyclerView Adapter using FirebaseUI — Android 🔥 | Shreyas Patil's Blog"
description: "Learn how to update Firebase queries dynamically without recreating your RecyclerView adapter using the FirebaseUI-Android library."
image: "https://blog.shreyaspatil.dev/_astro/cover-update-queries-without-changing-recyclerview-adapter-using-firebaseui-android-32098b3082b2.EH4XJr_m.png"
---

# Update Queries without changing RecyclerView Adapter using FirebaseUI — Android 🔥

In this article, you will learn how to change Firebase Realtime Database/Cloud Firestore queries without changing the whole adapter of a `RecyclerView` in Android by using the FirebaseUI-Android library.

Let’s say you need to populate a list using *RecyclerView*to show data loaded from Firebase Realtime Database*or*Cloud Firestore and you have implemented a custom `RecyclerView.Adapter` to hold data or you used [FirebaseUI-Android](https://github.com/firebase/FirebaseUI-Android) which is an official open-source library developed by the Firebase team. In this article, we’re going to use the*FirebaseUI-Android* library.

We’ll load data from Firebase Realtime Database/Cloud Firestore and populate a *RecyclerView (Simple + Paginated)using the adapter*. After that, we’ll change/filter the query based on some user interaction at runtime without changing whole adapter.

In the end, you will see app like this 👇. After clicking on one of the buttons, data in *RecyclerView* will be replaced by new data.

 *Demo output after changing the query.*

## 🔥 About FirebaseUI 😃

_FirebaseUI is an open-source library for Android that allows you to quickly connect common UI elements to Firebase APIs. _(see [FirebaseUI-Android on GitHub](https://github.com/firebase/FirebaseUI-Android))**It makes it easy to bind data from Firebase Realtime Database** or Cloud Firestore to your app’s UI 🎨.

FirebaseUI-Android provides a number of adapters, such as:

- `FirebaseRecyclerAdapter` — for binding Firebase Realtime Database

- `FirebaseRecyclerPagingAdapter` — for binding Firebase Realtime Database with pagination support

- `FirestoreRecyclerAdapter` — for binding Cloud Firestore

- `FirestorePagingAdapter` — for binding Cloud Firestore with pagination support

## ⚡️ Getting Started

Let’s write some code!

Open *Android Studio* and create a new project. Alternatively, you can simply clone [this repository](https://github.com/PatilShreyas/FirebaseRecyclerUpdateQuery-Demo). This is a very simple app for showing a list of posts.

## Gradle Setup

In the app module of `build.gradle,` include following dependencies.

```
dependencies {
// Firebase SDKs
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-firestore:21.4.1'
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-database:19.2.1'

// FirebaseUI for Real-time database
implementation 'com.firebaseui:firebase-ui-database:6.2.0'

// FirebaseUI for Cloud Firestore
implementation 'com.firebaseui:firebase-ui-firestore:6.2.0'

// Paging Library (For Pagination Only)
implementation 'android.arch.paging:runtime:1.0.1'
}
```

> If you’re unsure how to use FirebaseUI 🔥, check out the official FirebaseUI-Android repository on GitHub. Or, take a look at the official sample👇.

[https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-android](https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-android)

## ⚡️ How to Change the Query 🤔

In the adapter classes of *FirebaseUI* library, there’s a method `updateOptions()` which initialises an adapter with new options. Whenever this is invoked, the respective *RecyclerView* is populated with new data.

## 💻 Let’s Change the Queries 🔥

### #1 — Firebase Realtime Database

Here `mAdapter` is an instance of `FirebaseReyclerAdapter`. The `new` instance of `FirebaseRecyclerOptions` is created with a query: `newQuery`. Finally, we call `updateOptions()` . After this, you can observe the change in `RecyclerView`. 😃

```
fun changeQuery() {
val newQuery = mBaseQuery
.orderByChild("timestamp")
.limitToLast(100)

// Make new options
val newOptions = FirebaseRecyclerOptions.Builder<Post>()
.setQuery(newQuery, Post::class.java)
.build()

// Change options of adapter.
mAdapter.updateOptions(newOptions)
}
```

The same can be done in a paging adapter i.e. `FirebaseRecyclerPagingAdapter`. Just a small change is there while making options is we have to pass `PagedList.Config` as a parameter along with query in `setQuery()` .

### #2 — Firebase Cloud Firestore

Same as above, here `mAdapter` is an instance of `FirestoreReyclerAdapter`.

```
fun changeQuery() {
val newQuery = mCollectionReference
.orderBy("timestamp")
.whereEqualTo("seen", false)
.limitToLast(100)

// Make new options
val newOptions = FirestoreRecyclerOptions.Builder<Post>()
.setQuery(newQuery, Post::class.java)
.build()

// Change options of adapter.
mAdapter.updateOptions(newOptions)
}
```

Again, the same can be done in a paging adapter i.e. `FirestorePagingAdapter`.

We have successfully changed queries at runtime using the FirebaseUI library😃.

The source code for this article is available in [this GitHub repo](https://github.com/PatilShreyas/FirebaseRecyclerUpdateQuery-Demo).

**Thank You!** 😃

## Resources

[https://github.com/PatilShreyas/FirebaseRecyclerUpdateQuery-Demo](https://github.com/PatilShreyas/FirebaseRecyclerUpdateQuery-Demo)

[https://github.com/firebase/FirebaseUI-Android/](https://github.com/firebase/FirebaseUI-Android/)

```json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": "Update Queries without changing RecyclerView Adapter using FirebaseUI — Android 🔥 | Shreyas Patil's Blog",
  "image": "https://blog.shreyaspatil.dev/_astro/cover-update-queries-without-changing-recyclerview-adapter-using-firebaseui-android-32098b3082b2.EH4XJr_m.png",
  "datePublished": "2020-03-13T14:56:59.620Z",
  "author": [
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Shreyas Patil",
      "url": "https://shreyaspatil.dev/"
    }
  ],
  "keywords": "android-app-development, firebase, database, android, android-studio"
}

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement": [
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 1,
      "name": "Home",
      "item": "https://blog.shreyaspatil.dev/"
    },
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 2,
      "name": "Posts",
      "item": "https://blog.shreyaspatil.dev//posts/"
    },
    {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 3,
      "name": "Update Queries without changing RecyclerView Adapter using FirebaseUI — Android 🔥"
    }
  ]
}
```