I am new to Firebase and learning it. With Cloud Functions you can create trigger listeners to events that happen in Firestore (firestore events) or Authentication (auth events). Can I create listeners similarly with the Admin SDK of Firestore or Authentication in my own nodejs environment?
No, Cloud Functions triggers only work on the Cloud Functions backend, as they depend heavily on Google Cloud infrastructure to work efficiently. There is no exact equivalent for other environments. You can certainly use the provided nodejs Firestore SDK to set up a document or query listener, just like web and mobile clients, but it won't behave like a Cloud Functions trigger.
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I am currently creating a marketplace mobile application from scratch and I'm using React Native for the front-end part and Firebase for the backend (using Firebase and Firestore).
I am wondering wether :
I should create a RESTful API using cloud functions and express to create API endpoints (that would connect to firebase and firestore) that I'd call from my redux actions in my React Native app (using redux thunk).
or, I should call firebase and firestore directly from redux actions.
I see couple pros and cons for each method.
Restful API pros :
Safer as I can check and manipulate submitted data more easily
Custom API reply (I can manipulate the return data)
Restful API cons :
Probably slower as I would have to call an API endpoint that will then call firebase and/or firestore.
Won't be as easy to set listeners on firestore data
What do you think about it ?
Which option should I choose knowing that I predict that the app will get a few thousand users daily. I want it to be as fast and safe as possible and be able to set listeners for notifications purposes.
In my opinion you should mix them, if you have to manage users, products or etc. Firebase produces client and admin sdk that has different roles. If you haven't need manage any data of products or users or etc. you can simply use client sdk.
My advise is you can use admin sdk on API (server-side) and feel free to use client sdk on your clients.
Use as managements on API, listening data, realtime chat etc. via client sdk.
You can check admin and client sdk. Also npm packages for React Native here.
Mixing will be of help, you can try:
Listen for small amounts of data using the client SDK
Write and sort data using the cloud functions
In my experience, writing to a firebase database that uses ordered ids (in my case) leads to some huge problems in the long run. I lost a good chunk of data when my app accidentally wrote to a root index instead of a child index when the app was resumed from inactivity because the android system cleared the RAM.
Also, for notification, use Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Is there any way to check how many read/write on my app on Cloud Firestore?
There currently is no API to get the number of reads/writes from Cloud Firestore. Neither the client-side SDKs nor the server-side Admin SDKs expose this functionality.
The closest I can think of is something based on StackDriver monitoring that you can set up for Firestore. Based on that you can then wrap the StackDriver monitoring API in a custom end point (either in Cloud Functions or elsewhere).
I'm using Cloud Firestore as my back-end. I'm using rules so only authenticated users can read some data (private data) and none of them can write. I have also created a function that is triggered when some new content is added to the database. However, when the function is triggered, I'm able to write data even if the rules as set to false.
How to stop that from happening?
Actually when you access to Firestore via a Cloud Function (using the Firebase Admin SDK) none of the security rules apply.
The following documentation https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup explicitly indicates that for the Relatime Database:
The Admin SDK lets you interact with Firebase from privileged
environments to perform actions like Read and write Realtime Database
data with full admin privileges.
but it is the same with Firestore.
There is also a note in this Firestore "Get Started" documentation https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/security/get-started:
Note: The server client libraries bypass all Cloud Firestore Security
Rules...
As said above, this not only applies to the Admin SDK but also applies to the other server SDKs, because you use these server SDKs from what Firebase calls "a privileged environment", like your own server (under your control) or Cloud Functions (under your control too, since you are the only one able to deploy Cloud Functions code). See also What is a "trusted server environment" in Firebase?
If you want to restrict the write access for your Cloud Function, you will need to develop a specific business logic, in your Cloud Function, to mimic your security rules.
This documentation link for App Engine outlines an example where app engine listens to a RealTime Database reference.
I was wondering if
This can be done equivalently with Firestore using .onSnapshot
Whether I can specify wildcards in the reference as I do with cloud function triggers
Yes
No
There are no wildcard listeners with the Firestore SDK. Cloud Functions is responding to events generated by Firestore, which is very different than how a listener in the SDK works.
As I know currently Cloud Functions doesn't support triggering functions from Firebase.
For now I'm planing to use an basic Engine instance to trigger the functions based on the queue.
Is this the right way to go? or should I trigger the cloud function directly from the clients device after the data is inserted in the db?
thank you
Cloud Functions for Firebase was just launched today! You can use the SDK to trigger cloud functions from your Firebase database, storage bucket, authentication, and analytics events. https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/