Reference Firebase user objects in Firestore

Question

Is it possible to reference user objects in Firestore like a regular document from collection ? I've created a sample of fake users for test in the Authentication section, and I'd like to reference them in a collection.

Their is the reference field :

The id seems correct, however calling a db.doc() with this reference as a parameter returns an empty document (snapshot.exists returns false).

The database 'users' isn't present in my collections since it is handled by Firestore authentication system, but I was wondering if their was a way to access it, similar to regular documents.

Answer 1

You seem to be mixing up two products in the Firebase platform:

• Firebase Authentication handles user sign-in.

  All information about these users is stored in an internal database, that you can only access through the Firebase Authentication APIs.

• Cloud Firestore stores data that you put in it.

Firebase Authentication does not automatically create any user data in Firestore when a user is created. If you want such data in Firestore, you'll have to create it yourself, either in your application code, or in Cloud Functions in response to the user-created event.

Within Cloud Firestore there is no type that is a "reference to a Firebase Authentication user". But if you store user-specific documents in Firestore, you can use its Document Reference type to reference those user-specific documents.