Firestore document reference & protobuf

[Gil Salomon]

Firestore currently have document reference which is a lot like DB foreign key.

However I was wondering how does it play with protobuf? can I add a reference to a message stored in a firestore document inside a protobuf message and upload it to firestore so it will show there as reference?
I searched but didn't see anything of the sort in proto3 reference.

[Sam Stern]

Hi Gil,

Are you using Firestore with protobufs via the RPC API? In the REST/RPC API the Reference data type is defined with "referenceValue: <string>":

https://cloud.google.com/firestore/docs/reference/rest/v1/Value

In the end there is nothing special about a Reference, it's simply a stronger type for "string" which ensures that it represents a valid Cloud Firestore document or collection path. I generally advise people not to use this type actually, as simple strings are often much easier to work with and it's not hard to add your own validation.

- Sam

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[Gil Salomon]

Thanks Sam,

I see your point no real benefit in this reference type over string