Firesharp returning Mixed Object and Array JSON

I have this database in Firebase:

touristSpots {
      1stSpot : {
          key: value,
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     3 : {
                       somekey: somevalue
                     }
                     5 : {
                       somekey2: somevalue2
                     }
          }
      },
      2ndSpot : {
          key : value,
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     2 : {
                       somekey3: somevalue3
                     },
                     4 : {
                       somekey4: somevalue4
                     },
          }
      }
}

Thus, I am expecting a response to be same as mentioned. But Firebase reponse is something like:

touristSpots {
      1stSpot : {
          key: value
          ...
          nearSpots[
                     null, {
                       somekey: somevalue
                     },
                     null, {
                       somekey2: somevalue2
                     }
          ]
      }
      2ndSpot : {
          key : value
          ...
          nearSpots: {
                     2 : {
                       somekey3: somevalue3
                     }
                     4 : {
                       somekey4: somevalue4
                     }
          }
      }
}

As you can see the nearSpot on 1st record became an array [] and the second one became an Object {}. I can deal with each one of them but having mixed results like this then the program cannot convert them to an object due to converting an [] instead of an object.

I am new on firebase and am aware that C# has very limited support. I also cannot seem to find a workaround on this one. Have anybody else experienced this? Thank you

CodePudding user response：

You're using sequential, numeric keys in the database, which means the SDKs and REST API assume that you're storing an array. When you retrieve a subset of the items of such a structure, you may end up with an array with null elements in there:

nearSpots[
   null,                    // index 0: no item, so null value
   { somekey: somevalue },  // index 1
   null,                    // index 2: no item, so null value 
   { somekey2: somevalue2 } // index 3
]

Using arrays in Firebase is typically considered an anti-pattern, and is discouraged in this classic blog post: Best Practices: Arrays in Firebase.

The easiest workaround is to use keys with a short prefix, such as key0, key1, etc. This prevents the Firebase SDK/API from coercing the result into an array.