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Datatypes

Datatypes are the fundamental units of storage of your ORM.

Arrays

Arrays are synonymous to lists in Python

Booleans

True or False Values represented by the firestore.datatypes.boolean.Boolean class. Boolean values are coercible from other python types i.e. 0, "", [] = False, 1, "*", [1] = True.

Collection

Collections are groupings of documents i.e. Documents are instances of data and collections are the houses under which these documents are grouped or live.

Following the example blog post - Blog is a Collection and a Document because the collection name is called Blog and the Python Blog Class represents a single Document that will be saved to Google Cloud Firestore.


from firestore import Document
from firestore import Collection, String

class User(Document):
    __collection__ = "users"

    name = String()
    email = String(regex="some email regex")


class Comment(Document):
    __collection__ = "users/{}/blog/{}/comments"

    made_by = Reference(User)


class Blog(Document):
    __collection__ = "users/{}/blog"

    name = String()
    comments = Collection(Comment)

Here Blog.comments will hold a Google Cloud Firestore Subcollection of Comment Documents.

Document Class Meta Attributes

You might have noticed some squiggly class attributes __****__ in our Document definitions. These are Python Firestore specific meta attributes.

__collection__

This is an Optional Meta Attribute i.e. You don't need to provide it if the Document will live in a root collection e.g. /users or /countries. The same holds true for subcollections that will not be saved outside their parent Documents

class Comment(Document):
    #no __collection__ meta declared here
    text = String()
    commented_on = Timestamp()

class Post(Document):
    # no __collection__ meta declared here as well
    comments = Collection(Comment)


# This is perfectly fine as long as you don't use comment
# outside of its parent Post Class
comment = Post.comments.new()
# or
p = Post.get("some_post_id")
comment = p.comments.new()


# This will not raise an error but instead save comment
# in the root collection `/comment` and might not
# be what you expected
comment = Comment()
comment.text = "I like this post"
comment.save()

The Collection Meta Attribute is parsed according to the following rules:

  • /post or post - The document will be saved in a root collection called post
  • post/{}/comments - The {} is a placeholder into which Python Firestore inserts Unique Document IDs i.e. This collection url therefore implies that all child documents of the root post collection will have a comment subcollection.

__uniques__