Google Translate API and Firebase Firestore are killing each other - firebase

Question

We're trying to write a Google Cloud Function that gets a translation from Google Translate API, and then write the results to our Firebase Firestore database. Each works alone, but together nothing works. In other words, we can get a translation from Google Translate. We can write data to Firestore. But if we try to do both, we don't get a translation back from Google Translate, and nothing is written to Firebase. We get no error messages. We've tried the code with async await and with promises. Here's the code with promises:
exports.Google_EStranslateEN = functions.firestore.document('Users/{userID}/Spanish/Translation_Request').onUpdate((change, context) => {
if (change.after.data().word != undefined) {
const {Translate} = require('#google-cloud/translate');
const projectId = 'myProject-cd99d';
const translate = new Translate({
projectId: projectId,
});
// The text to translate
const text = change.after.data().word;
// The target language
const target = 'en';
let translationArray = []; // clear translation array
translate.translate(text, target)
.then(results => {
translation = results[0];
translationArray.push(translation);
try {
// write translation to dictionary
admin.firestore().collection('Dictionaries').doc('Spanish').collection('Words').doc(text).collection('Translations').doc('English').set({
'translationArray': translationArray,
'language': 'en',
'longLanguage': 'English'
})
.then(function() {
console.log("Translation written");
})
.catch(function(error) {
console.error(error);
});
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
})
.catch(error => {
console.error('ERROR:', error);
});
}
});
Here's the same code with async await:
exports.Google_EStranslateEN = functions.firestore.document('Users/{userID}/Spanish/Translation_Request').onUpdate((change, context) => { // triggers when browser writes a request word to the database
if (change.after.data().word != undefined) {
async function getTranslation() {
try {
let translationArray = []; // clear translation array
const {Translate} = require('#google-cloud/translate');
const projectId = 'myProject-cd99d';
const translate = new Translate({
projectId: projectId,
});
// The text to translate
const text = change.after.data().word;
const options = {
to: 'en',
from: 'es',
format: 'text'
}
let [translations] = await translate.translate(text, options);
translations = Array.isArray(translations) ? translations : [translations]; // If translations is an array, leave it alone; if not, put it in an array
translationArray.push(translations[0]);
await admin.firestore().collection('Dictionaries').doc('Spanish').collection('Words').doc(text).collection('Translations').doc('English').set({
'translationArray': translationArray,
'language': 'en',
'longLanguage': 'English'
})
.then(function() {
console.log("Translation written");
})
.catch(function(error) {
console.error(error);
});
// };
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
} // close getTranslation
getTranslation();
}
});

Answer 1

You're not returning a promise that's resolved when all the async work is complete. If you don't do that, Cloud Functions assumes that all your work is complete, and will clamp down on all resources, and any pending work will be shut down.
The promise returned by translate.translate().then().catch() is being ignored. Your nested call to admin.firestore()...set() has a similar problem. It's not sufficient to just call then() and catch() on every promise because then() and catch() both return yet another promise.
You're also unnecessarily mixing usage of try/catch with catch() on the promise. You don't need both strategies for error handling, just one or the other.
When you used await in your second example, you forced JavaScript to pause until the async work represented by the promise returned by set() was complete. This allowed your function to return only after all the work was finished, which is why it worked correctly.
You might be helped by watching my video series on use of promises and async/await in Cloud Functions. Proper handling of promises is crucial to creating a correctly working function.