Accessing Firebase Data inside unique AutoID - swift

Question

This is my first question and I'm still learning Swift/Xcode/Firebase, so I appreciate your patience. I've been stalking StackOverflow and have found a lot of answers to help with various things, but nothing that makes sense for the problem I've been struggling with for 2 days.
I am writing a program that will save a date picked on a previous viewcontroller and a set of user-entered floats from text fields to a Firebase database, and append each data set as a separate entry instead of overwriting the previous data. Using the first block of code below, I've got this problem solved except I can't find a way to do it without using AutoID. This leaves me with a setup like this in Firebase, but with multiple categories and "optionSelected" sections in each category:
program-name
Category 1
optionSelected
L1cggMnqFqaJf1a7UOv
Date: "21-12-2017"
Variable 1 Float: "12345"
Variable 2 Float: "26.51"
L1ciVpLq1yXm5khimQC
Date: "30-12-2017"
Variable 1 Float: "23456"
Variable 2 Float: "35.88"
Code used to save:
func newWithNewVars() {
let myDatabase = Database.database().reference().child("Category 1").child(optionSelected)
let variable1 = textField1.text
let variable2 = textField2.text
let variable1Float = (textField1.text! as NSString).floatValue
let variable2Float = (textField2.text! as NSString).floatValue
let writeArray = ["Date": textPassedOverDate, "Variable 1 Float": variable1Float, "Variable 2 Float": variable2Float]
myDatabase.childByAutoId().setValue(gasArray) {
(error, reference) in
if error != nil {
print(error!)
}
else {
print("Message saved successfully!")
}
}
}
The problem comes with recalling data. Since the AutoID is unique, I can't figure out how to access the data deeper inside for calculations. Specifically, I want to be able to make a new entry, press the save data button, and have it find the most recent entry in the "optionSelected" section so it can do calculations like subtract the older variable 1 from the new variable 1 and such.
Given the above description, layout, and code used above, what code structure would allow me to find the most recent date and access the data inside the AutoID sections for a specific category and "optionSelected"?
Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

The issue you're having is that you're trying to dig deeper but can't as you don't have a hold of that id. You'll want to use the .childAdded in your reference observation when you want to get inside of a list in your JSON tree when you don't have a hold of that id to get inside - this will be called as many times as there are values inside of Category 1 tree:
let reference = Database.database().reference()
reference.child("Category 1").child("optionSelected").observe(.childAdded, with: { (snapshot) in
let uniqueKey = snapshot.key // IF YOU WANT ACCESS TO THAT UNIQUE ID
print(uniqueKey)
guard let dictionary = snapshot.value as? [String: AnyObject] else { return }
let date = dictionary["date"] as? String
let variableOne = dictionary["Variable 1 Float"] as? Float
let variableOne = dictionary["Variable 2 Float"] as? Float
}, withCancel: nil)
You may also want to avoid using spaces in your database keys to avoid any problems in the near future. I'd stick with the common lowercased underscore practice e.g. "category_1" or "variable_2_float"