Native Mode

Cloud Firestore Native Instance

There can only be one Datastore instance associated with a single project. The Cloud Firestore in Datastore instance is automatically created when you enable the API:

Enable API

gcloud services enable firestore.googleapis.com

Data Schema

Because Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL database, you do not need to explicitly create tables, define data schema, etc. Simply use the API to store new documents, and perform CRUD operations.

Spring Data Firestore

The easiest way to access Cloud Firestore is using Spring Cloud GCP's Spring Data Firestore starter. This starter provides full Spring Data support for Cloud Firestore while implementing idiomatic access patterns.

Spring Data Feature	Supported
Reactive Repository	✅
ORM	✅
Declarative Transaction	✅
Repository	✅
REST Repository	❌
Query methods	✅
Query annotation	✅
Pagination	✅
Events	✅
Auditing	✅

Dependency

Add the Spring Data Firestore starter:

Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-cloud-gcp-starter-data-firestore</artifactId>
</dependency>

Gradle

Configuration

There is no explicit configuration required if you use the automatic authentication and project ID detection. I.e., if you already logged in locally with gcloud command line, then it'll automatically use Datastore from the project you configured in gcloud.

Notice that there is no explicit configuration for username/password. Cloud Firestore authentication uses the GCP credential (either your user credential, or Service Account credential), and authorization is configured via Identity Access Management (IAM).

ORM

Spring Data Cloud Firestore allows you to map domain POJOs to Datastore documents via annotations.

@Document
class Order {
    @DocumentId
    private String id;
    private String description;
    private LocalDateTime timestamp;
    private List<OrderItem> items;

    // Getters and setters ...
}

class OrderItem {
    private String description;
    private Long quantity;

    // Getters and setters ...
}

Because Firestore is a document-oriented NoSQL database, you can have nested structure and can establish parent-children relationships without complicated foreign keys.

Read the Spring Data Firestore reference documentation for more details.

Repository

Use Spring Data Reactive repository to quickly get CRUD access to the Cloud Firestore.

@Repository
interface OrderRepository extends FirestoreReactiveRepository<Order> {
}

In a business logic service, you can utilize the repositories:

@Service
class OrderService {
  private final OrderRepository orderRepository;

  OrderService(OrderRepository orderRepository) {
    this.orderRepository = orderRepository;
  }

  @Transactional
  Mono<Order> createOrder(Order order) {
    // Set the creation time
    order.setTimestamp(Timestamp.of(new Date()));

    // Children are saved in cascade.
    return orderRepository.save(order);
  }
}

Samples

• Spring Boot with Cloud Firestore sample