In 2020 this is still not available in the Firebase SDK however it is available in Firebase Extensions (Beta) however it's pretty complex to setup and use...
A reasonable approach
Helpers... (create/delete seems redundant but is cheaper than onUpdate)
export const onCreateCounter = () => async (
change,
context
) => {
const collectionPath = change.ref.parent.path;
const statsDoc = db.doc("counters/" + collectionPath);
const countDoc = {};
countDoc["count"] = admin.firestore.FieldValue.increment(1);
await statsDoc.set(countDoc, { merge: true });
};
export const onDeleteCounter = () => async (
change,
context
) => {
const collectionPath = change.ref.parent.path;
const statsDoc = db.doc("counters/" + collectionPath);
const countDoc = {};
countDoc["count"] = admin.firestore.FieldValue.increment(-1);
await statsDoc.set(countDoc, { merge: true });
};
export interface CounterPath {
watch: string;
name: string;
}
Exported Firestore hooks
export const Counters: CounterPath[] = [
{
name: "count_buildings",
watch: "buildings/{id2}"
},
{
name: "count_buildings_subcollections",
watch: "buildings/{id2}/{id3}/{id4}"
}
];
Counters.forEach(item => {
exports[item.name + '_create'] = functions.firestore
.document(item.watch)
.onCreate(onCreateCounter());
exports[item.name + '_delete'] = functions.firestore
.document(item.watch)
.onDelete(onDeleteCounter());
});
In action
The building root collection and all sub collections will be tracked.
Here under the /counters/
root path
Now collection counts will update automatically and eventually! If you need a count, just use the collection path and prefix it with counters
.
const collectionPath = 'buildings/138faicnjasjoa89/buildingContacts';
const collectionCount = await db
.doc('counters/' + collectionPath)
.get()
.then(snap => snap.get('count'));
Limitations
As this approach uses a single database and document, it is limited to the Firestore constraint of 1 Update per Second for each counter. It will be eventually consistent, but in cases where large amounts of documents are added/removed the counter will lag behind the actual collection count.