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The observable cache leaks subscriptions and is shared across SSR requests

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#790 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
react, typescript
Domain
backend, testing

Research direction

Start with SuspenseSubject.ts, especially the constructor, _subscribe, _reset, and hasValue, then trace the module-level cache binding in useObservable.ts and the three preload exports. Review the SSR behavior with renderToPipeableStream. Done means concurrent requests do not share entries, server rendering leaves no open subscriptions, and cache entries are evicted.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

v5

Tracking issue for cluster 0b. #748 covers only the getServerSnapshot half of this (fixed by #779); the cache lifecycle itself has never had an issue.

Everything below was verified against upstream/v5 on 2026-08-11 unless labelled otherwise.

Two defects, one lifecycle

1. Nothing is ever evicted, and the reset timer is cancelled permanently by the first subscriber.

_timeoutHandler is assigned only in the SuspenseSubject constructor (SuspenseSubject.ts:61,63) and cleared only in _subscribe (:124). Nothing re-arms it. So the first subscriber cancels the reset for the life of the object, and _reset() can only ever fire on an entry that nothing subscribed to within the timeout window.

⚠️ The comment at SuspenseSubject.ts:58 says the timer reschedules "on unsubscribe". That code was never written.

Separately, nothing removes entries from the cache Map at all: a sweep for preloadedObservables.delete / .clear across src/ on v5 returns zero hits, and the same sweep for .set / .has / .get returns three, so the search can come back non-empty.

Consequence: any cache entry that is ever used leaks its warmup subscription for the life of the process. Not SSR-only, the browser leaks too, bounded only by session length, which is likely why it has never been reported. A server has no such bound, and keys are per-user (firestore:doc:app:users/<uid>).

2. The cache is a module-level global, so concurrent SSR requests share entries.

useObservable.ts:11 binds the Map at import time off globalThis. ⚠️ Swapping globalThis._reactFirePreloadedObservables does not redirect it: the module keeps writing to the original object, silently. Any test that isolates that way is testing nothing.

Why this is a prerequisite, not cleanup

Measured under renderToPipeableStream (what the App Router runs, and it surfaces what renderToString hides):

  • In suspense mode reactfire suspends, waits for the emission, then renders the placeholder anyway, so the caller pays full latency for a loading state.
  • A cold cache in suspense mode hangs the stream rather than erroring, because firstEmission only resolves on a first emission.

So until the cache is request-scoped there is no way to server-render real data at all. Anything that seeds per-request data on a server depends on this landing first.

Plan: one decision, then three PRs

Decision first: suspense-mode eviction semantics. Error state persists indefinitely in suspense mode via a noop timeout, and resets after the window in non-suspense mode. Eviction has to pick a rule. Not a PR, and it overlaps #742, which asks for a retry path out of the same error state.

PR A. Browser lifecycle: refcount, re-arm, evict. Independent of SSR and a live bug today, so it is the half worth shipping even if the rest slips. Behavior change, no new API.

PR B. Per-request scoping via an explicit cache handle: createObservableCache(), a cache prop, an optional trailing argument on the three preload exports. Prototyped: scoping falls out, the preload API survives, no Node-only APIs, browser behaviour unchanged when omitted. New API surface.

PR C. Server disposal, riding on that handle. ⚠️ Scoping must never ship without it: alone, scoping converts one shared leak into one leak per request.

#779 lands ahead of all of it, since it is the getServerSnapshot half.

Acceptance

  • a test proving two concurrent SSR requests do not share cache entries
  • ⚠️ a test proving a server render leaves no open subscription and that entries are evicted

The second signal exists because the first one alone passes with every subscription still open and nothing evicted. That was caught on the prototype.

Notes

  • Estimated 5-6 days. An estimate, not a measurement.
  • ⚠️ hasValue (SuspenseSubject.ts:67-71) returning this._hasValue || !!this._error is load-bearing: it is what stops suspense re-throwing after the promise resolves. A naive redefinition produces an infinite suspend loop. It reads like a wart and a rewrite deletes it by accident.
  • Ruled out: React 19 cache() (RSC-only), AsyncLocalStorage (unnecessary once a handle threads through, kept in reserve), not caching on the server (does not survive the leak finding).
  • Zero confirmed users of the v4 preload API, though a code search cannot see private code, so "zero confirmed" rather than "zero".
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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