Simple concept question: Can you overwrite a public url used in Firebase?

Question

If a user changes their name or profile picture I want to update a JSON object that is stored at a publically available Firebase URL that holds these values. Is this possible in Firebase - basically reusing a URL?

It would stop me from having to update a lot of data in the Firestore collection.

Example:

• The mobile app has reserved public URLs for users profile data i.e. https://firebasestorage_images.mobileapp.com/uid-123456
• Leon, uid is 123456, uploads a new profile to his mobile app,
• Leons old profile picture has been rewritten with his new profile picture located at https://firebasestorage_images.mobileapp.com/uid-123456
• This stops creators of the mobile from updating every single message, post, etc from changing firestore data to match a new profile picture url

Edit: There are no code problems or bugs as I haven't written it. I cant even find it online

Answer 1

If you are using a structure that is similar to this one:

Firestore-root
  |
  --- users (collection)
       |
       --- $uid (document)
            |
            --- profilePhoto: "https://firebasestorage_images.mobileapp.com/uid-123456"

To read the URL that is associated with the user account, you only need to know the UID. So it doesn't really matter what does the profilePhoto field contain, the path to reading it will always be the same.

If you are looking to always have a unique URL, that's not possible. When you upload a photo to Firebase Storage, a token is generated. So even if you are using the same name, the new photo overwrites the old one, but a new token is generated. Such an URL looks like this:

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/your_app.appspot.com/o/photos/leon.jpg?alt=media&token=617c54b9-5d4c-...

You cannot use an old token to update new images.