How to limit number of Firebase compound indexes for querying with multiple filters

Question

I am creating a Firestore project that contains group chats/forums where users can filter the posts based on these fields:

Number of likes
If the post contains attachments (photos and/or files)
4 Tags (Questions, Exams, Assignments, Notes)

Users can apply any or all of these filters at the same time.

Each Post document has the following fields:

Number of Clips
A different boolean for each of the tags
A list of the files in the post
The text of the post

My method for creating these queries looks like this:

  setQueryFilters() {
      var queryPosts = db.collection('posts').where('course_id', '==', this.course);

      if (this.filterByNotes) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.where('notesTag', '==', true);
      }

      if (this.filterByExams) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.where('examsTag', '==', true);
      }

      if (this.filterByAssignments) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.where('assignmentsTag', '==', true);
      }

      if (this.filterByQuestions) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.where('questionsTag', '==', true);
      }

      if (this.filterByFiles) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.where('files', '!=', []);
      }

      if (this.filterByClips) {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.orderBy('clips', 'desc');
      } else {
        queryPosts = queryPosts.orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
      }

      return queryPosts;
    },

Since there are 6 different filters that can be applied, I have hundreds of potential different queries, and all of them (except a few) require me to create compound indexes in firebase. I'm not even sure if firebase will allow me to create this many indexes. Is there a better way to do this?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 03 '20 at 16:04

1

The Firebase CLI lets you deploy security rules and indexes based on a JSON file in your project workspace. You can write code to generate the JSON that describes the indexes you want to create, then deploy them with one command from the CLI. You should not have any problems creating all the required indexes.

See also:

answered Sep 03 '20 at 16:04

Doug Stevenson

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I Didn't know that. Thanks! Also, will having hundreds of indexes cause any performance problems? – Sdanson Sep 03 '20 at 20:14
No, an index doesn't do anything if it's not being used for a query. It just takes up space, which you have to pay for. – Doug Stevenson Sep 03 '20 at 20:58
From reading the documentation it seems that I need to code all of the indexes separately. Is there a more efficient way to do this? – Sdanson Sep 05 '20 at 22:20
No, there is not. – Doug Stevenson Sep 05 '20 at 23:14

How to limit number of Firebase compound indexes for querying with multiple filters

1 Answers1