# Accessing Firebase root

**URL:** https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560
**Category:** Questions about Thunkable X
**Tags:** firebase
**Created:** [April 12, 2024, 8:59pm UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560 "2024-04-12T20:59:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![tatiang](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/community.thunkable.com/tatiang/32/55482_2.png) [@tatiang](https://community.thunkable.com/u/tatiang)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2024, 8:59pm UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560/1 "2024-04-12T20:59:34Z")

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I know that you can access the root directory of a Firebase realtime database by using the cloud variable “//”. And I’m able to get and display the object properties of that path such as “photos,users” using these blocks:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/thunkable/original/3X/5/6/56e9e2f5dc0d8d0658556689617d5c0025bfc8f6.png)

My Firebase structure is:

```auto
[database url]/
photos/
   description: "test"
users/

```

But if I try to get the property “photos/description” or the property “/photos/description” (leading /) of the object `app variable AllFirebaseDataAsObject`, they both return **null**.

I can definitely get data directly from Firebase using cloud variable “photos/description” but I’m hoping to download the root data as an object and get properties locally from it since Firebase retrieval is a bit slow.

Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

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### Author: ![john\_shelby\_hhs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@john\_shelby\_hhs](https://community.thunkable.com/u/john_shelby_hhs)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2024, 9:53pm UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560/2 "2024-04-12T21:53:54Z")

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What do you get if you JSONify the app variable and put the result in a label?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![tatiang](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/community.thunkable.com/tatiang/32/55482_2.png) [@tatiang](https://community.thunkable.com/u/tatiang)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 3:49am UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560/3 "2024-04-13T03:49:24Z")

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That’s a REALLY helpful question… thank you for suggesting it!

The JSON is valid and what I expect. It shows the path being [object]/photos/description.

But when I attempt to get that – even from the JSON text that is displayed for the variable, I still get a null value. So I have some troubleshooting to do but this should help me figure it out.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![tatiang](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/community.thunkable.com/tatiang/32/55482_2.png) [@tatiang](https://community.thunkable.com/u/tatiang)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2024, 3:56am UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560/4 "2024-04-13T03:56:32Z")

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I figured it out! I switched from using cloud variables to access Firebase JSON as objects and started using properties of a local object. Firebase needs paths with “/” in them but local objects need paths with “.” in them. I swapped out the slashes for periods and it works now. 🙂

Instead of getting the property “photos/description”, I had success by getting the property “photos.description”.

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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/thunkable/original/3X/0/f/0f59f292712368bce16ff80133ae10de8a6f27e8.png) [@system](https://community.thunkable.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2024, 3:57am UTC](https://community.thunkable.com/t/accessing-firebase-root/2943560/5 "2024-07-12T03:57:16Z")

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