Subscriptions do not trigger when creating related data indirectly

[KiddoV]

Description

When using Brick’s subscriptions, changes to a table only fire when rows are inserted/updated in that table. If you create a related object indirectly by only inserting rows into a join or child table, the subscription on the parent table does not trigger.

Example (conceptual):

• You have a Parent table and a Child table with a foreign key to Parent.
• You subscribe to Parent changes:

appDB.subscribe<Parent>().listen((parents) {
 print("Parent updated!");
});

• Instead of inserting a row into Parent directly, you insert only into Child with a reference to a new parent ID.

final parent = Parent(id: "p1", name: "Parent A");
await appDB.upsert<Child>(Child(id: "c1", parent: parent));

Observed behavior:

The subscription on Parent never fires.

Expected behavior

Subscriptions on Parent should ideally detect changes to related children if the parent object is conceptually modified.

[tshedor]

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but this is actually expected default behavior. Paying attention to all associations instead of the original query can have unexpected side effects.

That said, extending subscriptions to pay attention to all associated models of a query is possible. This should be a mixin and not in the core repository code. PRs are welcome.

[KiddoV]

Thanks for clarifying, currently I have to trigger subscription manually. Hopefully, there's will be a better solution in the future.