For the people still wondering, if it is possible to use react-native-background-fetch for scheduling ANY task, it is completely fine as long as it does not touch the UI eg. (AsyncStorage, Redux-Persist, Realm, DB...) is not directly related to invoking change in the UI, so it is completely fine to use.
In my particular case, I am using the slowest option - AsyncStorage - to persist a props sort of object which I use on global App level and pass derived data onto my components:
// Example of HeadlessTask implementation
import BackgroundFetch from 'react-native-background-fetch'
import AsyncStorage from '@react-native-community/async-storage';
const HeadlessTask = async () => {
// Prepare data - fetching from API, other transformations...
let propsObject = {};
AsyncStorage.setItem(ITEM_KEY, JSON.strigify(propsObject))
.then(() => {
console.log('[AsyncStorage] Object Saved!');
// For iOS specifically we need to tell when the service job
// is done.
BackgroundFetch.finish();
})
.catch((e) => {
console.log('[AsyncStorage] Error saving object: ', e);
BackgroundFetch.finish();
});
}
P.S. See https://github.com/transistorsoft/react-native-background-fetch to see how to install and implement Background Fetch.