What this operation supports in Google Cloud Firestore
Deletes a single document from a Firestore collection by its document path.
Implementation details
Deleting a document removes it and its own fields, but any subcollections nested beneath that document are not automatically deleted along with it -- they can be left as orphaned data unless explicitly cleaned up.
Operational considerations
Automations removing records that have nested subcollections, like a customer document with an orders subcollection beneath it, need to handle deleting those subcollections as a separate step, since Firestore won't cascade the delete automatically.
Use cases
Automate archiving and removal of stale records in Firestore.
- Delete expired user sessions from a session collection.
- Remove test documents after QA cycles in Google Cloud Firestore.
- Clean up temporary records created during migrations.
- Prune outdated event logs from a logging collection.