How to model a chat application on Firebase Realtime Database?

Question

I am try to design a structure for chat application include private message and groups i by using real time firebase i don't know how to design the structure any help please i am try to do something like this is that true

Users
     |
     |_USER1
     |     |
     |     |__FRIENDS
     |     
     |_USER2
           |
           |__FRIENDS

Please list your concerns and tradeoffs you are considering – ehacinom Sep 19 '18 at 19:20 — ehacinom, Sep 19 '18 at 19:20

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 19 '18 at 17:01

You'll typically end up modeling the "chat rooms" in the database. So that each conversation (that users may see when they start the app), shows up as a separate node under some root list. You may want to separate the main metadata of each conversation from its actual messages and its participants.

So:

Chats
  chat1
    title: "...."
    lastUpdated: ...
  chat2
    title: "...."
    lastUpdated: ...
Messages
  chat1
    message1: { ... }
    message2: { ... }
  chat2
    message3: { ... }
    message3: { ... }
Participants
  chat1
    userid1: true
    userid2: true
  chat2
    userid1: true
    userid3: true
    userid4: true
    userid5: true

By using the same keys (chat1, chat2) for the nodes in each list, you can easily look up the data for a complete chat when needed. But by keeping them in separate top-level lists, you can better secure the app, and better control how much data is loaded.

Also see:

How to model a chat application on Firebase Realtime Database?

1 Answers1

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