Searching for substring in middle

Question

I am working with the Firebase Realtime Database, and my "description" subkey is indexed (the below structure has it mentioned).

{
    "check123": {
        "description": "Linked In Page",
        "tags": [
            "one"
        ],
        "url": "https://linkedin.com"
    },
    "fb": {
        "description": "My Facebook page",
        "tags": [
            "one",
            "two"
        ],
        "url": "https://facebook.com"
    },
    "twitter": {
        "description": "My Twitter page",
        "url": "https://twitter.com"
    } 
}

I wanted to search for "Facebook" in "description" key so that it returns the "fb" key's object. I am able to get it using search term "My Facebook" with below code:

get(
      query(
        ref(db, "/dbSubPathToMentionedObject"),
        orderByChild("description"),
        startAt(searchTerm),
        endAt(searchTerm+"\uf8ff")
      )
    )

where searchTerm is the variable for the current search term. But I want to search for substring from the middle. Is it possible? If so how?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 02 '22 at 10:49

But I want to search for substring from the middle. Is it possible?

No, it's not. There is no way you can perform a query in the Realtime Database that can return elements containing a particular substring. The best you can do is use the query at the end of your question.

A possible solution, that works for extremely small data sets would be to download all the content in a node and perform the search on the client.

Since the Realtime Database doesn't provide a solution for full-text search, then you should consider using third-party libraries like Elastic Search, Algolia, or Typesense.

If you consider at some point in time try using Cloud Firestore, then I recommend you reading the following resource:

How to filter Firestore data cheaper?

Searching for substring in middle

1 Answers1

Linked