Deleting documents in Firebase - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Deleting documents in Firebase Firestore

📖 Scenario: You are managing a simple app that stores user profiles in Firebase Firestore. Sometimes, you need to remove a user profile when it is no longer needed.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to delete a specific document from a Firestore collection using Firebase SDK.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Firestore collection reference

Specify the document ID to delete

Use the Firebase SDK method to delete the document

Confirm the deletion code is correctly structured

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Deleting documents is common when users remove their accounts or when data needs cleanup in apps using Firestore.

💼 Career

Understanding how to delete documents safely and correctly is essential for backend and full-stack developers working with Firebase.

1

Set up Firestore collection reference

Create a constant called usersCollection that references the Firestore collection named users using collection(db, 'users').

Firebase

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the collection function from Firebase Firestore and pass db and the collection name 'users'.

2

Specify the document ID to delete

Create a constant called userIdToDelete and set it to the string 'user123', which is the ID of the user document to delete.

Firebase

import { collection } from 'firebase/firestore';

const usersCollection = collection(db, 'users');

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the exact string 'user123' to the constant userIdToDelete.

3

Create a document reference for deletion

Create a constant called userDocRef that references the document to delete by using doc(usersCollection, userIdToDelete).

Firebase

import { collection, doc } from 'firebase/firestore';

const usersCollection = collection(db, 'users');

const userIdToDelete = 'user123';

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the doc function with usersCollection and userIdToDelete to get the document reference.

4

Delete the document using Firebase SDK

Write an async function called deleteUserDocument that calls deleteDoc(userDocRef) to delete the document. Use await inside the function.

Firebase

import { collection, doc } from 'firebase/firestore';
import { deleteDoc } from 'firebase/firestore';

const usersCollection = collection(db, 'users');

const userIdToDelete = 'user123';

const userDocRef = doc(usersCollection, userIdToDelete);

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Define an async function and use await deleteDoc(userDocRef) inside it to delete the document.