Firebase Deep Updates

Motivation

As of this writing, firebase recommends .update() for multi-location transactional commits to the Realtime Database. What is not natural is that the way .update() works is conceptually different when it is passed an object one level deep than when it it several levels deep. At one level deep it sets the properties at the current reference location, not the whole location, but when it is passed an object more than one level deep it doesn't merge the new data into the previous property value, but completely replaces the value. This package is meant to solve this discrepancy.

Get Started

firebase-deep-updates exports a single function that takes any value (scalar, null, array, object or combinations of all of them) and returns a one-level-deep object with slashed keys representing the locations of scalar and null values. For example, in the following:

const firebaseDeepUpdates = require('firebase-deep-updates');
 
const updates = firebaseDeepUpdates({
  name: null,
  foo: {
    bar: true,
  },
});
 
admin.database().ref().update(updates);

where updates is equal to:

{
  'name': null,
  'foo/bar': true,
}

You can also pass an optional second parameter with specific configuration.

API

firebaseDeepUpdates(data, opts)

• data (any): value (may be a scalar or an object) to be converted.
• opts (object): set of options.
  • target (object): mutate this object instead of creating a new one.