An index entry will exist regardless of if the fields are present or not.
This is the default density for an Enterprise Edition database.
The index will store unset values for fields that are not present in
the document.
SparseAll
An index entry will only exist if ALL fields are present in the document.
This is both the default and only allowed value for Standard Edition
databases (for both Cloud Firestore ANY_API and Cloud Datastore
DATASTORE_MODE_API).
Take for example the following document:
{
"__name__": "...",
"a": 1,
"b": 2,
"c": 3
}
an index on (a ASC, b ASC, c ASC, __name__ ASC) will generate an index
entry for this document since a, 'b', c, and __name__ are all
present but an index of (a ASC, d ASC, __name__ ASC) will not generate
an index entry for this document since d is missing.
This means that such indexes can only be used to serve a query when the
query has either implicit or explicit requirements that all fields from
the index are present.
SparseAny
An index entry will exist if ANY field are present in the document.
This is used as the definition of a sparse index for Enterprise Edition
databases.
Take for example the following document:
{
"__name__": "...",
"a": 1,
"b": 2,
"c": 3
}
an index on (a ASC, d ASC) will generate an index entry for this
document since a is present, and will fill in an unset value for d.
An index on (d ASC, e ASC) will not generate any index entry as neither
d nor e are present.
An index that contains __name__ will generate an index entry for all
documents since Firestore guarantees that all documents have a __name__
field.
Unspecified
Unspecified. It will use database default setting. This value is input
only.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2026-03-09 UTC."],[],[]]