How check if collection exist????

[Skrigueztep]

Version info

Angular: 12.2.14

Firebase: 9.4.0

AngularFire: 7.2.1

Other (e.g. Ionic/Cordova, Node, browser, operating system):

Windows: 10 Node: 14.18.2 NPM: 6.14.15

How to reproduce these conditions

Failing test unit, Stackblitz demonstrating the problem

Steps to set up and reproduce

Sample data and security rules

Debug output

Errors in the JavaScript console

ERROR FirebaseError: Invalid document reference. Document references must have an even number of segments, but has 1.

Output from firebase.database().enableLogging(true);

Nothing

Screenshots

Expected behavior

1.-

If a collection not exist and it is requested, should return a value that indicate this, like: null, undefined, [], etc.... in the best way, that collection, should be created automatically insted of return an error in console (by security reasons maybe)

or 2.-

A method to check if collection exist is expected, like this.firestore.collection(' ').exist() <-- Return boolean

Actual behavior

Throws following error: ERROR FirebaseError: Invalid document reference. Document references must have an even number of segments, but has 1.

[NicolasMaas]

Honestly this doesn't really look like an issue with AngularFire since this is (I think) expected behaviour. You could do it yourself with a try catch. If it errors you can make an empty collection yourself.

[RomuloPBenedetti]

If someone delete a collection users that have cached elements receive no extra event to invalidate cache data. For example:

    return this.angularFirestore.collection
          path, queryFunction
        ).valueChanges({idField: 'UID'})
        ...

produce only one event containing cached data and will only produce a event again if collection is created. I would appreciate a solution.