How do I create a Firebase collection?

Question

So I am writing a chat application that I want to have multiple rooms, however, I can't find a button on the Firebase console that I can add child collections.

I've tried exporting, editing, then importing but that doesn't seem to do much. I have looked at some Firebase tutorial's but I can't find one that explains this.

Answer 1

Anything you enter in the console has to have a value itself, or at least one child (with a value). This is because Firebase does not explicitly store "null" or empty values in the database. You can enter the name of the collection and then rather than a value use the + button at the right to start adding children to it and so on until you reach a node with a value:

You cannot however simply create a placeholder for a collection that has no values. If you need a collection but can't initialize any of its data, just use your security rules to define what's allowed and write your client code knowing it may or may not exist. Firebase allows you to attach listeners to nodes that don't exist yet.