Is it possible to save FCM notifications in Firestore?

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Hello, world!",
    "sender": "John Doe",
    "recipient": "Jane Doe",
    "timestamp": 1643723400
  }
}

Note that you can customize the document structure to fit your specific use case. The key is to store the relevant data in a way that makes sense for your application.

Cloud Functions for FCM notification storage

In some cases, you may want to use Cloud Functions to handle FCM notification storage. This can be particularly useful if you want to perform complex processing or validation on incoming messages before saving them to Firestore.

Here’s an example Cloud Function that saves FCM notifications to Firestore:

exports.saveFcmNotification = functions.firestore.region('us-central1').onMessage(async (message, context) => {
  const db = admin.firestore();
  const notificationCollection = db.collection('notifications');

  const notificationData = {
    message: {
      text: message.data.text,
      sender: message.data.sender,
      recipient: message.data.recipient,
      timestamp: message.data.timestamp
    }
  };

  notificationCollection.add(notificationData).then((docRef) => {
    console.log(`Notification saved to Firestore: ${docRef.id}`);
  }).catch((error) => {
    console.error(`Error saving notification to Firestore: ${error}`);
  });
});

This Cloud Function uses the Firebase Admin SDK to interact with Firestore and saves incoming FCM messages to the “notifications” collection.

Best practices for FCM notification storage

When saving FCM notifications in Firestore, there are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Data validation**: Validate incoming message data to ensure it meets your application’s requirements.
• Data normalization**: Normalize message data to reduce storage costs and improve query performance.
• Indexing**: Create indexes on relevant fields to improve query performance and reduce latency.
• Data retention**: Establish a data retention policy to ensure that old messages are removed from Firestore to prevent data clutter and reduce storage costs.
• Security**: Implement security measures to protect sensitive data, such as encrypting message content or using Firestore security rules to control access.