How do I create a Firebase collection? - firebase

So I am writing a chat application that I want to have multiple rooms, however, I can't find a button on the Firebase console that I can add child collections.
I've tried exporting, editing, then importing but that doesn't seem to do much. I have looked at some Firebase tutorial's but I can't find one that explains this.

Anything you enter in the console has to have a value itself, or at least one child (with a value). This is because Firebase does not explicitly store "null" or empty values in the database. You can enter the name of the collection and then rather than a value use the + button at the right to start adding children to it and so on until you reach a node with a value:
You cannot however simply create a placeholder for a collection that has no values. If you need a collection but can't initialize any of its data, just use your security rules to define what's allowed and write your client code knowing it may or may not exist. Firebase allows you to attach listeners to nodes that don't exist yet.

Related

Find the last element present in the array via Firestore rules

I am trying to work on restricting people who are able to like the posts on an application built on firebase.
I need to verify if the last element of the array exists.
However, I am unable to find the last element present inside array.
I have an array 'Likes' in cloud firestore which has 2 parts - userName and userId
How will I be able to find the last userId present in the array via firestore rules
I have tried below as can be done in python but doesnt work -
request.resource.data.likes[-1].userId
What you call an array, is actually known as a List object in Firestore security rules. This type indeed does not recognize negative offsets (honestly: most systems I know of don't), but you can get the same by using size.
So something like:
request.resource.data.likes[request.resource.data.likes.size()-1].userId

Can we trigger firebase cloud functions when we create a collection (not "document")?

I am trying to achieve a scenario where firebase triggers only once when a collection is created and not every time that a document is added to the collection. Let's say I want it to trigger only for the first document added to the collection and not for every other document added to the same collection. How can that be done? Please help !!!
There is no such trigger for Cloud Functions. Your trigger path must specify exactly one document, or use wildcards to specify a path that could possibly match many documents.
If you want to know what a collection contains its first document, you will have to either:
Maintain a count of documents in that collection (perhaps in yet another document in another collection), and trigger of the change of that value when it goes from 0 to 1.
Query all of the documents in the collection where a document was just created in order to figure out if it was the first one.
Both of these requires a fair amount of extra code - very much not trivial to implement correctly for arbitrary collections. They could also run into problems under heavy load. If these options won't work for you, I suggest figuring out another way to get you function to trigger at the right time.
While It's not possible to do directly. You can check if collection contains any elements, and if it does it means that it exists.
const result =await firestore.collection("collection").limit(1).get()
if(result.size){
// Collection exists
}

How do I stop Firebase from creating an additional nested object or how can I access the newly generated string?

Problem: Whenever I add an order to the orders array, an additional nested array element(-KOPWA...) gets added. I wouldn't mind except, I don't know how to access that nested string to access it's child nodes.
Example of database node for users below:
firebase.database().ref('users/'+userIdState+'/orders/'+<<unique numbervariable>>).push({
"order":{"test":"product","quantity":2}
});
I'm using the above code to push new json objects with a unique number to the firebase array. Still the nested array with the weird strings gets generated.
Can anyone help me understand how to either: create my own nested array with my own unique string or how to access the nested string that gets generated from firebase so I can access it's children nodes.
Multiple instances of nest arrays will be generated by users.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Moe
You're experiencing this behaviour because Firebase's push is not the same as an array push. I recommend reading this article to understand how it works.
As for a solution, you can simply change push to set in your code. This will create the structure you were (presumably) expecting, that is
1:
order:
...
This is however potentially unsafe, if you allow concurrent writes (i. e. if the "unique number" in your example is not always unique).
Afaik Firebase recommends using push to safely create collections/"arrays". You can retrieve the generated key by calling the key property on the reference returned by push. Like this:
var ref = firebase.database().ref('users/'+userIdState+'/orders/'+<<unique numbervariable>>).push({
"order":{"test":"product","quantity":2}
});
var generatedKey = ref.key; // the value you're looking for
If you decide to use it, you can probably just drop the order number you have right now and just use the generated one.

Simulate a Delete with Firebase

In the "Simulator" built into the Firebase site is it possible to simulate deleting a node?
I tried entering the path to a node in the URL field (e.g. /my/path/-JCNAUFZJFJMGX1RYWJL) and I entered {} into the data field but I think this just simulates adding nothing as apposed to deleting.
In Firebase, writing a null value is equivalent to removing the data at a given reference (i.e. ref.set(null) is effectively the same as ref.remove()), and thus using a null value is an effective way to test removing data in the simulator.

Sync related data using angularfire/collection

I want to use angularfirecollection to keep one-way sync with a list of data. The structure is a list of 'things' with various properties (e.g. 'Likes') and users who each hold a subset of 'things' keys (e.g. -jsdzsdrestofkey: true). U
sing angularfirecollection (or firebase native 'on'), I can sync up all things that a particular user has... I can also grab (using firebase native 'once') each 'thing''s properties to display.
In angular, however, I need to use $apply() to inject the property data into scope for each item in the user's 'thing' list. To keep things in sync, I suppose I can use firebase's on change event... But this all requires me to create new references for each thing in a user's list.
What is the best way to approach grabbing relational data in firebase, while keeping both the list and the relational data in sync?
Thanks!
Irfaan
If I understand correctly, it sounds like you should use FirebaseIndex and feed the index directly into an angularFireCollection. Then you wouldn't need to use $apply since the thing data will already be in the $scope, and everything will stay synced:
var index = new FirebaseIndex(fb.child('users/789/thing_list'), fb.child('things'));
$scope.things = angularFireCollection(index);
// $scope.things will contain the user's things with the associated thing data

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