nodejs-firestore: Ignore undefined values rather than throw exceptions

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Environment details

OS: Mac
Node.js version: 12
npm version: 6.13.6
@google-cloud/firestore version: 3.7.4"

Steps to reproduce

Insert using fstore.collection(blah).doc(foo).set({"hello": undefined})

Expected

Like JSON.stringify, undefined keys are ignored.

Actual

Error: Value for argument “data” is not a valid Firestore document. Cannot use “undefined” as a Firestore value (found in field “hello”).

Explanations

undefines are a routine part of js. Not gracefully handling undefines means firestore becomes a brittle library that barfs every now and then. The developer experience could be much better.

A quick dirty workaround is doc.set(JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(val)), which is yuck. The library can handle this elegantly and preserve JSON.stringify like behaviour.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Comments: 15 (5 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

As of today May 29, 2020, Firebase Added support for calling FirebaseFiresore.settings with { ignoreUndefinedProperties: true }. When this parameter is set, Cloud Firestore ignores undefined properties inside objects rather than rejecting the API call.

+54

elmasry on May 30, 2020

For anyone using the v9 API:

import { getFirestore, connectFirestoreEmulator, initializeFirestore } from 'firebase/firestore'; // Firebase v9+

  // Must be called before getFirestore()
  initializeFirestore(app, {
    ignoreUndefinedProperties: true
  });
  const firestore = getFirestore(app);

odbol on Jan 4, 2022

@nojvek Thanks for this request! This has come up a couple of times. I will talk with the team to see if this is a behavior we can support.

schmidt-sebastian on Apr 21, 2020

initializeFirestore(app, { ignoreUndefinedProperties: true });

Uncaught FirebaseError: initializeFirestore() has already been called with different options. To avoid this error, call initializeFirestore() with the same options as when it was originally called, or call getFirestore() to return the already initialized instance.

You can get around the issue where it’s already initialized by storing the admin instance in a singleton and just reusing that: https://stackoverflow.com/a/70468753/473201

odbol on Feb 13, 2023

I’m posting this is a work-around that if you’re for whatever reason unable to update your legacy firebase version and can’t access the ignoreUndefinedProperties argument.

Here’s a similar custom version set that does the same thing, that actually exposes more functionality allowing you to decide if you want to check also nested fields for undefined, or only the root level of the passed data.

export const ignoreUndefinedSet = async (
  // depending on your namespace & /types version, you can use firebase.firestore.<name> instead
  reference: FirebaseFirestore.DocumentReference,
  data: FirebaseFirestore.DocumentData,
  options?: FirebaseFirestore.SetOptions,
  checkNestedObjects = true,
) => {
  const isPlainObject = (val: unknown) =>
     typeof val === 'object' && val !== null && !(val instanceof Date) && !Array.isArray(val)
  const keepDefinedProperties = (
     obj: FirebaseFirestore.DocumentData,
     nestedCheck = true,
  ) =>
   Object.entries(data).reduce(
      (result, [key, value]) => (
           value === undefined
                ? result
                : (nestedCheck && isPlainObject(value))
                   ? Object.assign(result, { [key]: keepDefinedProperties(value) })
                   : Object.assign(result, { [key]: value })
       ),
      {}
  )
  const onlyDefinedProperties = keepDefinedProperties(data, checkNestedObjects)
  await reference.set(onlyDefinedProperties, { ...options })
}

So essentially these two statements are equivalent

await reference.set(data, { ignoreUndefinedProperties: true }) // newer firebase version

await ignoreUndefinedSet(reference, data) // my polyfill

samuelhulla on Nov 9, 2020