Firesharp returning Mixed Object and Array JSON | C#

Question

I have this database in Firebase:

touristSpots {
      1stSpot : {
          key: value,
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     3 : {
                       somekey: somevalue
                     }
                     5 : {
                       somekey2: somevalue2
                     }
          }
      },
      2ndSpot : {
          key : value,
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     2 : {
                       somekey3: somevalue3
                     },
                     4 : {
                       somekey4: somevalue4
                     },
          }
      }
}

Thus, I am expecting a response to be same as mentioned. But Firebase reponse is something like:

touristSpots {
      1stSpot : {
          key: value
          ...
          nearSpots[
                     null, {
                       somekey: somevalue
                     },
                     null, {
                       somekey2: somevalue2
                     }
          ]
      }
      2ndSpot : {
          key : value
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     2 : {
                       somekey3: somevalue3
                     }
                     4 : {
                       somekey4: somevalue4
                     }
          }
      }
}

As you can see the nearSpot on 1st record became an array [] and the second one became an Object {}. I can deal with each one of them but having mixed results like this then the program cannot convert them to an object due to converting an [] instead of an object.

I am new on firebase and am aware that C# has very limited support. I also cannot seem to find a workaround on this one. Have anybody else experienced this? Thank you

Answer 1

You're using sequential, numeric keys in the database, which means the SDKs and REST API assume that you're storing an array. When you retrieve a subset of the items of such a structure, you may end up with an array with null elements in there:

nearSpots[
   null,                    // index 0: no item, so null value
   { somekey: somevalue },  // index 1
   null,                    // index 2: no item, so null value 
   { somekey2: somevalue2 } // index 3
]

Using arrays in Firebase is typically considered an anti-pattern, and is discouraged in this classic blog post: Best Practices: Arrays in Firebase .

The easiest workaround is to use keys with a short prefix, such as key0 , key1 , etc. This prevents the Firebase SDK/API from coercing the result into an array.