Introducing Conditional REST Requests

Firebase Realtime Database added conditional requests to its REST API, enabling clients to safely update shared values without losing changes caused by concurrent writes. The feature addresses race conditions such as multiple users incrementing a video’s upvote count after reading the same initial value, where ordinary read-modify-write operations could overwrite one another. Clients first retrieve data along with an ETag, then send a PUT request containing the updated value and an if-match header with that ETag; the update succeeds only if the stored data has not changed in the meantime. If another update occurred, the request fails and returns the latest data and ETag, allowing the client to recalculate the value and retry. This approach follows the HTTP Compare and Swap pattern and provides a REST-based alternative to transactions already available in Firebase’s mobile and web SDKs.

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