Transactions and batched writes

Transactions and batched writes are features offered by Firebase’s Cloud Firestore that provide developers with powerful tools for ensuring data integrity and performing atomic operations on the database.

Transactions in Cloud Firestore allow developers to perform a series of read and write operations on one or more documents atomically.

This means that either all operations in the transaction are applied successfully, or none of them are applied at all. It ensures data consistency and prevents data corruption in scenarios where multiple clients might be trying to modify the same data simultaneously.

Transactions are useful for scenarios where data needs to be updated based on its current state or when multiple operations need to be performed as a single unit. For example, in a banking application, a transaction might involve transferring funds from one account to another, where both the debit from one account and the credit to another account need to occur atomically.

Cloud Firestore automatically retries transactions if conflicts or contention occur due to concurrent updates from multiple clients. Developers can implement transaction logic using the runTransaction() method provided by the Firestore SDK.

Batched Writes:

Batched writes allow developers to perform multiple write operations as a single batch, ensuring that either all write operations succeed or none of them are applied. This helps maintain data consistency and reduces the number of round trips to the server, improving performance.

With batched writes, developers can combine multiple set, update, delete, or create operations into a single batch and commit them atomically. This is particularly useful for scenarios where multiple document updates need to be applied together, such as updating multiple documents within a single transaction or performing bulk updates.

Batched writes are useful for optimizing write operations and reducing latency in scenarios where multiple write operations need to be performed sequentially. For example, in an e-commerce application, batched writes could be used to update inventory levels, apply discounts, and update order status in a single atomic operation when processing a customer’s order.

By leveraging transactions and batched writes, developers can ensure data integrity, prevent race conditions, and perform complex database operations atomically in Cloud Firestore. These features are essential for building robust and scalable applications that require consistent and reliable data management.