Error when persisting nested objects

Environment details

• OS: Linux Mint
• Node.js version: 8.9.4 LTS
• npm version: 5.6.0
• @google-cloud/firestore version: 0.11.2

Steps to reproduce

1. call function ref.doc(id).set(params, options), which params is a object like:

{
  "notifications": {
    "web": "a random token string"
  },
  "updatedAt": 1519320011313
}

Expected behavior

• Persist the object

Actual behavior

• I got error Cannot encode type ([object Object]) to a Firestore Value. The [object Object] is the nested object ( {web : a random token string} ).

I realized the function isPlainObject at line 1428 returns true for {notifications…}, but returns false for the nested object {web: …}, as it has no Object.prototype property.

//firestore/src/document.js 1428

function isPlainObject(input) {
  return (
    typeof input === 'object' &&
    input !== null &&
    Object.getPrototypeOf(input) === Object.prototype
  );
}

When I tried to force input to be an object

function isPlainObject(input) {
  return (
    typeof input === 'object' &&
    input !== null &&
(Object.getPrototypeOf(input) === Object.prototype) || (Object.getPrototypeOf(Object.create(input)) === Object.prototype)
  );
}

I got another error for the other value at not nested object: Argument \"data\" is not a valid Document. Object prototype may only be an Object or null: 1519320772620.

Using lodash 's isObject method:

function isPlainObject(input) {
    return require('lodash').isObject(input) //returns true for both objects
}

I got the error Argument \"data\" is not a valid Document. obj.hasOwnProperty is not a function

How can I handle this problem? Thank you in advance.

[BkunS]

Had the issue working with GraphQL (resolver), fixed it by

data = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data));

GraphQL does pass the data in as an object, but somehow there might be something missing inside the object, causing the object failed to pass firestore validation. Re-creating the object might hurt the performance a little, but that’s the only way I find out to solve it.

[manwithsteelnerves]

I just went through the reason shared earlier why its not supported. That makes total sense. Here I don’t want to use explicit dot notation string and direct firestore methods to update. This is because its difficult to maintain if I change a variable name.

However, I was able to solve it with some additional steps.

In updateUser method

1. Convert the data with JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data))
2. Run a for loop for each key of data and check if its of type FieldValue
3. If its field value, I update the parsed data from step 1 to the field value

public async updateDocument<T>(resourcePath : string, data : {[fieldPath: string]: any }, type : { new(): T }) : Promise<void>
  {
    const start = Date.now();

    const documentRef   : DocumentReference   = getDatabase().doc(resourcePath);

    // Updating timestamp
    data._updatedAt = Date.now();

    const jsonData = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data));
    Object.keys(data).forEach(key => {
      if(data[key] instanceof FieldValue) {
          jsonData[key] = data[key]; //Resetting the values back as field value class instances are allowed custom/special class objects
      }
    });

    await documentRef.update(jsonData);
    
    console.log(`[Time : ${Date.now() - start} ms] Update Document : ${resourcePath}`);
  }

Also, as you notice, its the problem with the firestore FieldValue class values as its a special operation and may be processed differently internally. As mentioned, I don’t want to miss the type information so can’t go with direct firestore updates (similar to examples of dot notation shown over here. They totally aren’t type safe - favorites.color)