firestore-serializers

An automatic JavaScript serialization/deserialization system for Firestore

Features

• Simple to use – just pass a string to deserialize, or a DocumentSnapshot to serialize

• Also supports QuerySnapshot serialization and deserialization

• Can serialize/deserialize cyclical Firestore structured (i.e. DocumentReference) automatically

• Deep serialization/deserialization, including array members

• Works in-browser, in Node.js, or in any native library (e.g. React Native Firebase)

• Comes with full TypeScript type definitions

• Tested with high code coverage

Why?

Firestore provides offline support, but it's fairly primitive: if your device doesn't have an internet connection, it uses the cached data, but otherwise it uses live data. So when you're on a slow connection, it often takes ages to query data.

A fix for this is to manually store Firestore data in your own caching system (e.g. React Native's AsyncStorage or LocalStorage in a browser). However, this often presents challenges because Firestore documents can contain non-serializable values.

This library does the heavy lifting for you, by converting special Firestore types (e.g. GeoPoint or DocumentReference) in your documents to serializable values, and vice-versa.

Installation

npm install firestore-serializers

Usage

import firebase from 'firebase';
import 'firebase/firestore';
import {serializeDocumentSnapshot, serializeQuerySnapshot, deserializeDocumentSnapshot, deserializeDocumentSnapshotArray} from "firestore-serializers";

const doc = await firebase.firestore()
    .collection('my-collection')
    .doc('abc')
    .get();

const collection = await firebase.firestore()
    .collection('my-collection')
    .get();

// stringify document (returns string)
const serializedDoc = serializeDocumentSnapshot(doc);
 
// stringify query snapshot (returns string)
const serializedCollection = serializeQuerySnapshot(collection);

/*
returns DocumentSnapshot-like object
This matches the actual DocumentSnapshot class in behaviour and properties,
but is NOT an instance of the DocumentSnapshot class.
*/
deserializeDocumentSnapshot(
    serializedDoc,
    firebase.firestore(),
    firebase.firestore.GeoPoint,
    firebase.firestore.Timestamp
);

/*
returns an array of DocumentSnapshot-like objects, like the ones above.
Does NOT return a QuerySnapshot.
Think of it as returning the contents of the 'docs' property of a QuerySnapshot
*/
deserializeDocumentSnapshotArray(
    serializedCollection,
    firebase.firestore(),
    firebase.firestore.GeoPoint,
    firebase.firestore.Timestamp
);

License

Licensed under the MIT license. Copyright Pal Kerecsenyi.