Firebase Search Database?

[sfxworks]

Let's say I have a large number of users or items I want to go over. I obviously don't want to download the entire list and parse it (I could but that's bad practice for large scale lists).

How would I do that? I'm trying to translate this to the best of my ability. https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/rest/database/#section-query-parameters

[agentphantom]

Querying data is a bit tricky, I will explain the full scenario:

In my database I have a node named cms_news, inside this node I have hundreds of entries, each one looks something like this:

title = "My Title"
description = "Some description"
timestamp = 100045454545
ispublished = true

Before querying this data we must add an index on the database rules. Go to the rules tab and copy this code:

"cms_news": {
            ".read": true,
            ".write": true,
            ".indexOn": [
                 "ispublished"
            ]
        }

It is very important that the index key is the same as the key you want to search/filter, in this case it is ispublished.

Now we want to query all the news entries that are published.

In SQL we would do something like:

SELECT * FROM cms_news WHERE ispublished = true

In Firebase we need to load this url:

https://YOUR-PROJECT-ID.firebaseio.com/cms_news.json?orderBy="ispublished"&equalTo=true

It is very important that ispublished be surrounded by double quotes.

Your data would not be ordered, you will have to do a simple myArray.sort() in AS3.

[sfxworks]

What about a scenario where you would want to look for the names of news articles? Typing in a word and getting .title's that match a string.

[agentphantom]

Unfortunately Firebase doesn't offer this functionality: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38618953/how-to-do-a-simple-search-in-string-in-firebase-database

You can use this code that was suggested in one of the answers for something similar to a SQL LIKE:

//We have several entries with the title Promotion XYZ, we are going to find the ones that have the word Promo inside them.
var searchTerm:String = "Promo" //Capitalization does matter
var parameter1:String = "%22title%22";
var parameter2:String = "%22" + searchTerm + "%22";
var parameter3:String = "%22" + searchTerm + "\uf8ff%22";

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest('https://<YOUR-PROJECT-ID>.firebaseio.com/cms_news.json?orderBy='+parameter1+'&startAt='+parameter2+'&endAt='+parameter3);

Edit: Added and tested the example code.

[sfxworks]

What if I use current values? Such as publishDate={todaysTimeStamp}

Can I get only the results of today's values for example?

[agentphantom]

Yes, that's possible. You will do something like the following:

//First get the timestamp of the current day, not the current time. You can use a calendar component.

var myDate:Number = myCalendar.selectedDate.getTime(); //This should get the timestamp at 00:00:01
var myDateAtMidnight:Number = myDate + 86400000; //We add the milliseconds to the date to cover the full range.

//Then you request this URL
'https://<YOUR-FIREBASE-PROJECT>.firebaseio.com/cms_news.json?orderBy="publishedDate"&startAt='+myDate+'&endAt='+myDateAtMidnight

[sfxworks]

and I would just do an indexBy timestamp for the rules, right?

[agentphantom]

That's correct, for every field you want to be able to search by you add it to the .indexOn array:

"cms_news": {
            ".read": true,
            ".write": true,
            ".indexOn": [
                 "ispublished",
                 "title",
                 "timestamp",
                 "something"
            ]
        }

[sfxworks]

Would this work for numbers too? Example: if I have a number of latitude and longitudes and I want to get something around a certain point?

Example: [35.2457298,-80.7758522] for the point Range 50 meters

[agentphantom]

To do this kind of search Firebase offers a library called GeoFire:

https://github.com/firebase/geofire-js

You will have to study how it makes the request and port the relevant part to AS3.

An alternative solution could be to create a proxy with this library:

1. Create an HTML file with this library inside.
2. Upload it to Firebase Hosting.
3. Use it as a simple web api call by sending your 3 parameters to the HTML file and it will output back the JSON response.

Here's a guide to retrieve the parameters from an URL:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/979975/how-to-get-the-value-from-the-get-parameters

Once you have those parameters you can call your GeoFire query.

[sfxworks]

I've never played with a javascript api before. I usually only use vanilla. How do I handle geofire exactly?

Take it's library (.js files) and put all of it in one html file? And then load it using a url request... but then how would I call a function and all from it?

[agentphantom]

My experience with JS is limited as well, this is what I found:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3100497#3100497