followers and following sytem - node.js

Question

I am working on a social network web application I have established a system of following followers with firebase and node js , so I created a collection users and in it two following followers array, I managed to add them
Now I want to issue a condition to check if the user has already made a follow up not to add it a second time to the table how can i access to the tables (following, followers)in order to verify if the user is in
exports.onFollow = (req, res) => {
const followDocument = db.doc(`/users/${req.body.email}`);
const followerDocument = db.doc(`/users/${req.user.email}`);
let followData;
let followerData;
followDocument
.get()
.then((doc) => {
if (doc.exists) {
followData = doc.data();
if ('req.user.email', 'in', followData.followers.docs) {
return res.status(200).json({
error: 'user already follow'
});
} else {
followData.followers.push(req.user.email);
return followDocument.update({
followers: followData.followers
});
}
}
})
.catch((err) => {
console.error(err);
res.status(500).json({
error: err.code
});
});

Answer 1

It sounds like you want followers to be an array with unique values, so that each email address can only occurs once. Firestore has special arrayUnion operation for adding values to such a field.
From the documentation on updating elements in an array:
If your document contains an array field, you can use arrayUnion() and arrayRemove() to add and remove elements. arrayUnion() adds elements to an array but only elements not already present. arrayRemove() removes all instances of each given element.
var washingtonRef = db.collection("cities").doc("DC");
// Atomically add a new region to the "regions" array field.
washingtonRef.update({
regions: admin.firestore.FieldValue.arrayUnion("greater_virginia")
});
// Atomically remove a region from the "regions" array field.
washingtonRef.update({
regions: admin.firestore.FieldValue.arrayRemove("east_coast")
});
I'd recommend switching to using arrayUnion() for your use-case, as it prevents having to do the query to detect if the email address is already in the array.