Does Fetching a Parent Collection in Firebase Firestore Return Its Entire Sub-Collection Tree?
No, when you read a document from a collection in Firestore, it does not automatically return the entire tree of nested collections and sub-collections. Firestore is designed to allow for flexible and scalable data structures, meaning each collection and document is independent in terms of read operations. How Firestore Reads Work 1. Reading a Document: • When you read a document, you only get the fields within that document. Any sub-collections under that document are not included in the read operation. 2. Reading a Collection: • When you read a collection, you get a list of documents within that collection. Again, this does not include any nested sub-collections. Example Scenario Consider the following Firestore structure: users (collection) | |-- userID (document) | |-- name: "John Doe" |-- age: 30 | |-- orders (sub-collection...
