Assign value of a Firestore document to a variable

Question

I am trying to read the value of a Firestore document. I have tried doing it two different ways, but each fails. In the first one, an error is thrown on the return line:

Answer 1

The Firebase call is an asynchronous function. It takes extra time to execute because it's talking to a server (as you've noted) - as a result, the completion block (the block that defines document and err in your example) happens at a different time, outside of the rest of the body of the function. This means you can't return a value from inside it, but you can pass another closure through to it, to execute later. This is called a completion block.

func readAvailableLists(forUser user: String, completion: @escaping ([String]?, Error?) -> Void) -> [String] {
    let db = Firestore.firestore()
    db.collection("userslist").document(user).getDocument { (document, err) in
        if let document = document, document.exists {
            // We got a document from Firebase. It'd be better to
            // handle the initialization gracefully and report an Error
            // instead of force unwrapping with !
            let strings = (UserInformationDocument(dictionary: document.data()!)?.lists!)!
            completion(strings, nil)
        } else if let error = error {
            // Firebase error ie no internet
            completion(nil, error)
        }
        else { 
            // No error but no document found either
            completion(nil, nil)
        }
    }
}

You could then call this function elsewhere in your code as so:

readAvailableLists(forUser: "MyUser", completion: { strings, error in
    if let strings = strings {
        // do stuff with your strings
    }
    else if let error = error {
        // you got an error
    }
})