How to access file data from firebase storage without downloading - firebase

Question

I have a URL for my file type .ies that is uploaded on firebase storage and I want to read the content inside the file but when I hit URL on the browser it only returns the information about the file, not the content
Example link: https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/westgatedash-d1341.appspot.com/o/documents%2FIES%2FCDL2-45W-M-120V_IESNA2002.IES
but when I use query params alt=media it downloads that I don't want.
Are there any query params to get the data of the file? or any way to achieve the goal ?

Answer 1

According to the documentation, each call is different and for different purposes:
Listing objects:
To list the objects in a bucket:
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer OAUTH2_TOKEN" \
"https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/BUCKET_NAME/o"
Downloading objects:
curl -X GET \
-H "Authorization: Bearer OAUTH2_TOKEN" \
-o "SAVE_TO_LOCATION" \
"https://storage.googleapis.com/storage/v1/b/BUCKET_NAME/o/OBJECT_NAME?alt=media"
The difference when hitting the endpoint is, precisely, the alt=media param. What I understand is that you might want to stream the object? If so, you can achieve it through the client libraries. For instance:
To handle the file on a Cloud Function you can follow this guide you will find more detailed info. As a summary, to download a file:
// Download file from bucket.
const bucket = admin.storage().bucket(fileBucket);
const tempFilePath = path.join(os.tmpdir(), fileName);
const metadata = {
contentType: contentType,
};
await bucket.file(filePath).download({destination: tempFilePath});
console.log('Image downloaded locally to', tempFilePath);
This will save the image to a temporary folder since this is the recommended way to do it.
Use gcs.bucket.file(filePath).download to download a file to a temporary directory on your Cloud Functions instance. In this location, you can process the file as needed.
EDIT
According to Downloads Documentation:
You can send download requests to Cloud Storage in the following ways:
Simple download: Downloading objects to a destination.
Streaming download: Downloading data to a process.
Sliced object download: Downloading large objects.
In the Docs, following the GitHub Repo: For C++ it shows a stream downloading:
void ReadObject(google::cloud::storage::Client client,
std::vector<std::string> const& argv) {
//! [read object] [START storage_download_file]
namespace gcs = google::cloud::storage;
[](gcs::Client client, std::string const& bucket_name,
std::string const& object_name) {
gcs::ObjectReadStream stream = client.ReadObject(bucket_name, object_name);
int count = 0;
std::string line;
while (std::getline(stream, line, '\n')) {
++count;
}
std::cout << "The object has " << count << " lines\n";
}
//! [read object] [END storage_download_file]
(std::move(client), argv.at(0), argv.at(1));
}
But for NodeJs, for some reason, it doesn't. I was not able to find any example of that. On the other hand there are other questions in SatckOverflow with the same question, i.e: this:
const {Storage} = require('#google-cloud/storage');
const storage = new Storage();
const bucket = storage.bucket(bucket);
const remoteFile = bucket.file(file);
let buffer = '';
remoteFile.createReadStream()
.on('error', function(err) {console.log(err)})
.on('data', function(response) {
buffer += response
})
.on('end', function() {
//console.log(buffer);
res.send(buffer);
})