How to Initialize Firestore Document Reference Swift

Question

I have a user model as per the below which gives me a dictionary of a User .

import UIKit
import FirebaseFirestore

protocol SerializeUser {
    init?(dictionary: [String: Any])
}

struct User {
    var documentRef: DocumentReference?
    var displayName: String
    var photoURL: String
    var email: String
    var isEmployee: Bool

    var dictionary: [String: Any] {
        return ["displayName": displayName, "photoURL": photoURL, "email": email, "isEmployee": isEmployee]
    }
}

extension User: SerializeUser {
    init?(dictionary: [String: Any]) {
        guard
        let displayName = dictionary["displayName"] as? String,
        let photoURL = dictionary["photoURL"] as? String,
        let isEmployee = dictionary["isEmployee"] as? Bool,
        let email = dictionary["email"] as? String else { return nil }
        self.init(displayName: displayName, photoURL: photoURL, email: email, isEmployee: isEmployee)
    }
}

I need to initialize the documentRef within my User struct somehow any ideas on how to do that? please.

Answer 1

Somewhere you need an instance of your database to build the document reference.

var db: Firestore? = Firestore.firestore()

struct User {
    lazy var documentRef: db.collection("users").document(displayName)
}

I don't see a document id referenced anywhere here so I assumed you're using displayName as a key. Declaring the variable as lazy lets you initialize it with your other instance variables.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I have solved this by using Decodable Protocol as illustrated in this post; Using Decodable to get the object and document ID with Firestore