In Firestore how to update a field in a document that may or may not exist?

Question

If we try to update a field in a document in Firestore, it throws an error, that it doesn't exist. Should I manually first check the document exist, and if not, create it and then update the field, or there is a better and more elegant practice?

Answer 1

You haven't said which language you're using to write your code, but each SDK should have an option to pass to set() that lets you update a document that already exists. For example, in JavaScript on web clients:

doucmentReference.set({ a: 1 }, { merge: true })

That merge: true will update the data if the document already exists.