How to ref.refresh while discarding previous state?

[fujidaiti]

When refreshing aFutureProvider using ref.refresh, it keeps the previous state while the asynchronous process is running. For example, if the previous state is an AsyncData, ref.refresh changes the provider's state to AsyncData(isLoading: true), not to AsyncLoading. This behavior makes sense for cases like pull-to-refresh actions (showing old values while loading).

However, there are some cases where this behavior is not ideal. For instance, when recovering from an error state such as a network connection failure, we might want to restart the provider from the AsyncLoading state rather than keeping the old error state. For Notifiers, we can manually achieve this as follows:

Future<void> refresh() async {
  state = const AsyncLoading();
  // Fetch data again
  ...
}

This approach works well for Notifiers, but it's a bit tedious and doesn't work for FutureProviders. Is there a more efficient way to implement this restarting behavior?

Thank you.

[johnnyggalt]

For Notifiers, we can manually achieve this as follows
Actually, I don't think that's the case. I arrived at trying exactly that before giving up and ending up in this thread.

The problem is that the state property invokes _element.state = newState;, and that ends up invoking AsyncTransition<T>.asyncTransition, which insists on using copyWithPrevious if there is any previous state. There is no way to wipe the slate clean with respect to state.

My scenario is that when the user adds a new item, I'd prefer to just have the UI reset back to what happens when it first loads.

[rrousselGit]

You generally shouldn't try to clear the "data" of an AsyncValue.

Instead, prefer having your UI check asyncValue.isRefreshing