Question 281569 in PHP Question posted in
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Php – How to update an existing nested array in firebase to add a new item through curl?

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The above shown is my firebase realtime db data structure. Currently there is only one set of data under the msgs array with the name 119.My requirement is to add more sets of data(which may come with the index 120,121 etc.) like the array 119.The below laravel code replaces the entire array of msgs while adding the new set of data. I wanted to keep all the items in the msgs array as all other arrays as it is and add new set of data as the next item of msgs array in the firebase. How to achieve this? ANy help is appreciated.

$url = env('FIREBASE_DATABASE_URL') . 'messages.json';
 // $postdat = array();

$postdat[$request->chat_id]["user_id_" . $user_id]['chats']['chat_id_' . $request->chat_id]['msgs'][$message['id']]['msg_id'] = $message['id'];
$postdat[$request->chat_id]["user_id_" . $user_id]['chats']['chat_id_' . $request->chat_id]['msgs'][$message['id']]['sender_id'] = $message['sender_id'];
$postdat[$request->chat_id]["user_id_" . $user_id]['chats']['chat_id_' . $request->chat_id]['msgs'][$message['id']]['msg_body'] = $message['message'];
$postdat[$request->chat_id]["user_id_" . $user_id]['chats']['chat_id_' . $request->chat_id]['msgs'][$message['id']]['sender_name'] = $message['sender_name'];
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "PATCH");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($postdat));

Means, i just wanted to add a new item 120 to the msgs array .

sample data structure of expected output

enter image description here

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    My requirement is to add more sets of data(which may come with the index 120,121 etc.) like the array 119.

    I think you need here a PUSH data, not REPLACE data.

    Modified code below;

    $url = env('FIREBASE_DATABASE_URL') . 'messages.json';

$postdat = array();

$postdat['msg_id'] = $message['id'];
$postdat['sender_id'] = $message['sender_id'];
$postdat['msg_body'] = $message['message'];
$postdat['sender_name'] = $message['sender_name'];

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "POST");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($postdat));

    I see also that your using cURL to interact with Firebase, so you’ll need to use the POST instead of PATCH to appends new data to the specified path.

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  2. 0

    Firebase’s PATCH operation does not perform a deep merge of the data you provide with the existing data. Rather it loops over the top-level keys in the JSON you provide, and replaces the existing data for those keys with what you provide.

    —

    In your case that means that you’re replacing the existing data in $postdat[$request->chat_id] (since that’s the top-level key in the JSON you post) with the value in your request, replacing all existing messages.

    To allow your use-case, you have two options:

    • You can run the PATCH result on a lower-level in the database. To do this, you’d post to a URL deeper in the database.

      This would look something like https//yourproject.firebaseio.com/messages/72/user_id_4/chats/chat_id_72/msgs.json (I’m using hard-coded keys here for simplicity, but you can construct the path from variables as you do now). When you PATCH on that level, the new message ID 141 will be the top-level key, so no data above that path will be replaced.

    • Alternatively you can use / inside the $postdat variable, to have Firebase perform a deeper updates.

      So this’d look something like $postdat['messages/72/user_id_4/chats/chat_id_72/msgs'] = .... This is an instruction to Firebase to write to that specific deeper path, rather than replacing the top-level key.

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