Cloud Firestore Client - Class CollectionReference (1.31.0)

Reference documentation and code samples for the Cloud Firestore Client class CollectionReference.

Represents a Cloud Firestore Collection.

Collections are implicit namespaces for Firestore Documents. They are created when the first document is inserted, and cease to exist when the last document is removed.

Example:

use Google\Cloud\Firestore\FirestoreClient;

$firestore = new FirestoreClient();
$collection = $firestore->collection('users');

Get the collection name.

Names are absolute. The result of this call would be of the form projects/<project-id>/databases/<database-id>/documents/<relative-path>.

Other methods are available to retrieve different parts of a collection name:

• Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::id() Returns the last element.
• Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::path() Returns the path, relative to the database.

Example:

$name = $collection->name();

Get the collection path.

Paths identify the location of a collection, relative to the database name.

To retrieve the collection ID (the last element of the path), use Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::id().

Example:

$path = $collection->path();

Get the collection ID.

IDs are the path element which identifies a resource. To retrieve the full path to a resource (the resource name), use Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::name().

Example:

$id = $collection->id();

Get a reference to a document which is a direct child of this collection.

Example:

$newUser = $collection->document('john');

Get a document reference with a randomly generated document ID.

If you wish to create a document reference with a specified name, use Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::document().

This method does NOT insert the document until you call Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\DocumentReference::create().

Example:

$newUser = $collection->newDocument();

Generate a new document reference, and insert it with the given field data.

This method will generate a random document name. If you wish to create a document with a specified name, create a reference with Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::document(), then call Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\DocumentReference::create() to insert the document.

This method immediately inserts the document. If you wish for lazy creation of a Document instance, refer to Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::document() or Google\Cloud\Firestore\Google\Cloud\Firestore\CollectionReference::newDocument().

Example:

$newUser = $collection->add([
    'name' => 'Kate'
]);

List all documents in the collection.

Missing documents will be included in the result. A missing document is one which does not exist, but has sub-documents.

Example:

$documents = $collection->listDocuments();
foreach ($documents as $document) {
    echo $document->name() . PHP_EOL;
}

Get the parent document reference for a subcollection, or null if root.

Example:

$parent = $collection->parent();