CODEWITHSUNDEEP
firebasegoogle-cloud-firestorefirebase-cli
Shivam Singh
Shivam Singh

Reputation: 1731

Firestore : Document has children, must specify -r or --shallow

I wanted to delete an entire collection in firestore.

I used the firebase command - firebase firestore:delete product/

Error: Must pass recursive or shallow option when deleting a collection.

Again tried - firebase firestore:delete product/1

Error: Document has children, must specify -r or --shallow.

Please help me know, what does -r and -shallow means?

Which option should I preferably choose for bulk delete of entire collection using firebase command? I need to delete the entire docs inside the collection.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1374

Answers (2)

Sam Stern
Sam Stern

Reputation: 25134

To understand the arguments, you can use --help:

$ firebase firestore:delete --help

  Usage: firestore:delete [options] [path]

  Delete data from Cloud Firestore.


  Options:

    -r, --recursive    Recursive. Delete all documents and subcollections. Any action which would result in the deletion of child documents will fail if this argument is not passed. May not be passed along with --shallow.
    --shallow          Shallow. Delete only parent documents and ignore documents in subcollections. Any action which would orphan documents will fail if this argument is not passed. May not be passed along with -r.
    --all-collections  Delete all. Deletes the entire Firestore database, including all collections and documents. Any other flags or arguments will be ignored.
    -y, --yes          No confirmation. Otherwise, a confirmation prompt will appear.
    -h, --help         output usage information

The two options here are -r (recursive) or --shallow.

If you pass -r when deleting a document, then it will also delete all subcollections of the document as well as all subcollections of subcollections, etc.

If you pass --shallow it will only delete the document in question and will leave any subcollections intact.

Upvotes: 3

Shivam Singh
Shivam Singh

Reputation: 1731

tried both -

firebase firestore:delete -r <path>

deletes all the docs(deeply nested also) inside a collection

firebase firestore:delete -shallow <path>

deletes all docs (1 level) inside the collection, it just unlink the collection from children docs, path still exists to fetch deeply nested children.

Upvotes: 1

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