Fetching Download URL From Uploaded Image - Firebase and Swift - swift

Question

I currently have a view controller where the user uploads an image and that image is stored in the Firebase Storage, with folders of their user id and in there their uploaded image. I want to fetch that image's url and display it on the view controller. The question I have is, do i need to store that uploaded image's download url into the realtime database ie; Users - > User Id - > Media -> Image Title -> Download URL? Or is there a way for me to refer an image view to Firebase storage and accordingly into the User Id's folder containing all the images and display this? Would appreciate it a lot if someone could help me out. Thank you!
This is my code:
let imageName = (Auth.auth().currentUser?.uid)!+"/\(imageTitle.text!)"
let imageReference = Storage.storage().reference().child(MyKeys.imagesFolder).child(imageName)
imageReference.putData(data, metadata: nil) { (metadata, err) in
if let err = err {
print ("Error")
return
}
imageReference.downloadURL(completion: { (url, err) in
if let err = err {
print ("Error")
return
}
guard let url = url else {
print ("Error")
return
}
let dataReference = Firestore.firestore().collection(MyKeys.imagesCollection).document()
let documentUid = dataReference.documentID
let urlString = url.absoluteString
let data = [
MyKeys.uid:documentUid,
MyKeys.imageUrl: urlString,
MyKeys.imageTitle: self.imageTitle.text!,
] as [String : Any]
dataReference.setData(data) { (err) in
if let err = err {
print ("Error")
return
}
}
})
}

Answer 1

There are two ways to read the data from Storage:
Through the Firebase SDK by calling getData or write on a reference, as shown in the documentation on downloading data.
Through a download URL for the reference, which provides public read-only access.
To call getData, write or to get a download URL, you need to have a reference to the file as shown in creating a reference.
Since you store the files under the UID of the user, you can always create a reference to any for for a user if you known their UID. So you can always perform one of the two methods above to read the data for the file, even if you didn't store the download URL.
That said, it is fairly common to store the download URL in a database, as it means you can then treat it like any other image URL. By doing so the rest of your code won't have to know anything about Cloud Storage.
So: it can work without storing the download URL in the database, but it's also fine (and common) if you do store the download URL. The choice is really up to you.