CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptreact-nativegoogle-cloud-firestoregoogle-cloud-functionsfirebase-storage
Olivia
Olivia

Reputation: 2171

Firestore Delete All References of A User

I have a chat app build in react native. When a user decides to delete their profile, I want to remove all references of them from the database.

The DB has references to their user id in the "matches" table, the "chat" table, and the "messages" table for each of the people the deleted user was chatting with.

I am using firebase functions to handle the deletion of the user doc data and auth but I am not sure what the best way to go about removing all of these references would be. My question is: what is the best way to remove all references of an ID out of a somewhat complex database? I assume this will be taxing to loop through every single user in the DB to search for this one ID.

deleteAccount = () => {
var db = firebase.firestore();
firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged(async (user) => {
  if (user) {
    //delete user data
    db.collection("Users")
      .doc(user.uid)
      .delete();
  } else {
    console.log("user needs to reauth");
    return false;
  }
});
};

firebase functions

exports.deleteUser = functions.firestore
  .document("Users/{userID}")
  .onDelete((snap, context) => {
    const deletedValue = snap.data();
    // Delete the images
    try {
      admin.auth().deleteUser(deletedValue.id);

      const imgRef1 = firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/0")
        ? firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/0")
        : null;
      const imgRef2 = firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/1")
        ? firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/1")
        : null;
      const imgRef3 = firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/2")
        ? firebase.storage().ref(user.uid + "/images/2")
        : null;
      imgRef1.delete().then(function() {
        imgRef2.delete().then(function() {
          imgRef3.delete().then(function() {});
        });
      });
    } catch (e) {
      console.log("no images to delete");
    }
  });

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1010

Answers (1)

Frank van Puffelen
Frank van Puffelen

Reputation: 599051

Firebase products such as the databases and storage have no implicit knowledge of what data belongs to what user. That relation only exists because your application code made it.

For that reason you will also have to look up/traverse the relations when deleting the user, to find (and delete) their data. There are no shortcuts in the product here, although there is a open-source library that contains an implementation that works from a configuration file: user-data-protection

Edit: I just realized there's actually an Extension to Delete User Data, which does pretty much the same as the library linked above. It might be worth to have a look if that suits your needs

Upvotes: 1

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