Cloud Firestore collection count

Question

Is it possible to count how many items a collection has using the new Firebase database, Cloud Firestore?

If so, how do I do that?

Answer 1

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.