Delete user and all his documents Firestore

Question

When a user wants to delete his account I want to make sure that the 'documents' he created in Firebase are also deleted.

I found some help online which got me to this:

deleteAccount() {

        const qry: firebase.firestore.QuerySnapshot = await this.afs.collection('houses', ref => ref.where('email', '==', this.afAuth.auth.currentUser.email)).ref.get();
        const batch = this.afs.firestore.batch();

        qry.forEach( doc => {
          batch.delete(doc.ref);
        });
      batch.commit();         
}

But I get an error on the 'await' keyword which says: 'await' expression is only allowed within an async function.

Can anyone tell me how to fix that, or if there's a better way of doing this?

I'm pretty new to this so I'm not sure how to proceed, any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The solution is to create an async function.

You mentioned that you are new to programming, and in the beginning it can be difficult to understand promises and async/await. I would recommend that you watch this video for an introduction.

---

You can solve it in 2 ways.

1. Async, jut add the async word: async deleteAccount() {
2. Create a promise chain (try it out for practice):

---

deleteAccount() {
  firebase.firestore.QuerySnapshot = await this.afs.collection('houses', ref => ref.where('email', '==', this.afAuth.auth.currentUser.email)).ref.get()
  .then(qry => {
    const batch = this.afs.firestore.batch();
    qry.forEach(doc => batch.delete(doc.ref));
    return batch.commit();
  })
  .then(() => console.log('done'))
  .catch(err => console.log(`failed with ${err.message}`)

Btw, if you go with async/await, remember to understand try/catch well. Happy coding!