how to retrieve data ordered by key inside unspecified key with firebase - firebase

Question

I have a snapshot for my reference in firebase like this:
"friendlist" : {
"user1" : {
"user3" : 1
},
"user2" : {
"user1" : 0
}
"user3" : {
"user1" : 1
}
}
The explanation for the reference:
Every user has an unique id, i'm using user's id for their friendlist unique id. In example above i have 3 users and every user have his own friendlist. Inside their friendlist, there's other user's id that already be friend with him. If the value is 1, the user already be friend. But when the value is 0, the user is requesting to be friend.
My problem is:
How to get all user's friendlist's id which have "user1" with value 0 inside their friendlist? Can i do that in just one query?
I think i need to iterate through all friendlist and orderbykey for every friendlist and looking for "user1". Or there's any good approach to do that?
Any answer would be appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

It would help if you next time tell a bit more about what you've already tried. Or at the very least specify what language/environment you're targeting.
But in JavaScript, you can get those users with:
var ref = new Firebase('https://yours.firebaseio.com/friendlist');
var query = ref.orderByChild('user1').equalTo(0);
query.once('value', function(usersSnapshot) {
usersSnapshot.forEach(function(userSnapshot) {
console.log(userSnapshot.key());
});
});
With the sample data you specified, this will print:
user2
You should add (and will get a warning about) an index for efficiently performing this query:
{
"rules": {
"friendlist": {
".indexOn": ['user1']
}
}
}
Without this index, the Firebase client will just download all data to the client and do the filtering client-side. With the index, the query will be performed server-side.
A better data model
You'll likely want to search for any friend, which turns the index into:
".indexOn": ['user1', 'user2', 'user3']
But with this structure, you'll need to add an index whenever you add a user. Firebase SDKs don't have an API to add indexes, which is typically a good indication that your data structure is not fitting your needs.
When using a NoSQL database, your data structure should meet the needs of the application you're building. Since you are looking to query the friends of user1, you should store the data in that format too:
"friendlist" : {
"user1" : {
"user3" : 1
},
"user2" : {
"user1" : 0
}
"user3" : {
"user1" : 1
}
},
"friendsOf": {
"user1": {
"user2": 0,
"user3": 1
},
"user3": {
"user1": 1
}
}
As you can see, we now store two lists:
* friendList is your original list
* friendsOf is the inverse of your original list
When you need to know who friended user 1, you can now read that data with:
ref.child('friendsOf').child('user1').on('value'...
Note that we no longer need a query for this, which makes the operation a lot more scalable on the database side.
Atomic updates
With this new data model, you need to write data in two places when adding a friend relation. You can do this with two set()/update() operations. But in recent Firebase SDKs, you can also perform both writes in a single update like this:
function setRelationship(user1, user2, value) {
var updates = {};
updates['friendList/'+user1+'/'+user2] = value;
updates['friendsOf/'+user2+'/'+user1] = value;
ref.update(updates);
}
setRelationship('user3', 'user4', 1);
The above will send a single command to the Firebase server to write the relationship to both friendList and friendsOf nodes.