Firebase Cloud Functions - access debug or release database - firebase

I have a project for both Android and iOS that's using cloud functions for same app behavior and consistent data storing. For now we were debugging apps on single database, storage and authentication.
The problem is when I switch to release variant I want functions to operate on release database, storage and auth.
I've been searching for an answer to my problem and all I've found was this: How to access multiple Realtime Database instances in Cloud Functions for Firebase
but it doesn't help too much.
Is there a way to go about that without making another Firebase project for release variant?

Ok, so basically just a while after posting this question I've found official firebase guide that helped me resolve this issue.
Short answer: no, you have to create another project in Firebase as described in guide.

Related

Create and configure Firebase project programmatically

I am building an automation process for my app, which includes creating several new Firebase projects. (After a lot of investigation, I am sure that several projects are needed, and that it cannot be done with just one project).
I am looking for a way to create a new Firebase project from scratch, and enable Phone Auth, Cloud Firestore, and Cloud Storage, along with security rules, programmatically.
I have taken a look at the Firebase Management REST API, which indeed shows a way to create a new Firebase project and link it to an existing GCP project, but couldn't find a way to configure the project itself through the API (Authentication, Firestore, Storage, etc.).
Is there any way to create and configure a Firebase project from scratch, using an API/SDK or CI/CD of some kind?
Thank you!
Have you looked into the firebase-admin SDK? It is a backend-only API because it needs your private key to authenticate against and can therefore not be used in the app directly (shipping your private key with the app would be pretty big security issue!), but as I understand it, creating new firebase-projects is something of a backend activity for you anyway?!
Look at https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/ for the API's documentation and what you can do with it.
So after a long research, it seems that we can combine the Firebase CLI and the Firebase Admin SDK in order to achieve it.
We can create a new project using the command
firebase projects:create NEW_PROJECT_ID
And then to configure all of the necessary configurations through the admin SDK

Storing API keys in a Flutter Firebase app? Do I need to hide them? How?

I am developing an iOS/Android app with Flutter and Firebase (mainly Cloud FireStore and Firebase Auth). According to the Firebase documentation/example, they just put the API key along with the googleAppID straight into the app's source code. This to me seems very insecure, but at the same time I did hear that dart is compiled AOT. So what is the best practice for putting the Firebase API keys in a Flutter app?
Any response is appreciated!
That example is usually not followed. The key is stored in the google-services.json file or the equivalent for iOS that should be added to the project following the Firebase setup instructions. This removes the issue with people easily knowing your key. I don't believe it would matter if someone did however as the key is intended to be public.
Setup Instructions

How to create a firebase project with same structure as an existing one?

I'm working on a product which uses Firebase as its backend. Since firebase exposes the API keys to the user so that could be a security issue. So, after doing some research I've set the database security rules along with API keys restrictions.
But, now I'm unable to use it in local development as well. I was thinking of creating another firebase project and use that as a testing environment and use the existing one as production.
Since the existing project has a lot of data and users. I want everything similar in the new firebase project as well. But I'm unable to find an efficient way to do so. Can anyone please suggest what would be the best option here? Should I create a new testing environment or is there a way to allow me to use the keys locally without it causing a security concern?
Any help would be great. Thank you for your time.
There is no specific command to replicate one project to another, but you can build the necessary functionality yourself with each product's APIs.
For porting users between projects you can use:
The Firebase CLI, which has auth:import and auth:export commands.
The Firebase Admin SDK, which has commands to list all users and import a list of users.
For transferring data between the projects, you can use the API of the relevant database to read/write the data.

Firebase tools use cases

could somebody explain use cases for using firebase tools. I understand that we can use them to connect to Firebase Realtime database and for authentication. But what I cannot grasp is: do we use it on our local machine and then deploy to google or is it also useful when hosting on other servers? I would love to hear more use cases for using the tools.
Thank you.
The Firebase tools/CLI provide commands to interact with your Firebase projects from a shell/terminal.
You'd typically run it on your local machine to make changes to the database, update files for hosting, update your security rules, import/export users, etc.
For a full list of its commands, see the reference documentation for the Firebase CLI.

Expo and react-native-firebase

I'm trying to integrate Firebase into my expo app using the react-native-firebase framework which has several advantages over the regular firebase package when it comes to react-native apps.
However, I'm running into difficulties since the instructions say I must add the GoogleService-Info.plist to ios/[YOUR APP NAME]/GoogleService-Info.plist, and expo apps don't have an ios folder from what I understand.
Am I pretty much screwed or is there a solution for this?
As the react-native-firebase documentation says, you need to eject your app if you want to use this library with expo. Be mind that eject action is not reversible. More info here and here and here.
If you use Expo and would like to use this package, you'll need to
eject. If you do not want to eject, but wish to make use of features
such as Realtime Database (without offline support) & Authentication,
you can still use the Firebase Web SDK in your project.
Today, you can't have the Firebase react-native sdk with expo. And this is not planned according to: https://expo.canny.io/feature-requests/p/full-native-firebase-integration.
So you have to play only with the javascript sdk from Firebase.
Cloud Firestore is new, it will be better for the javascript sdk for offline and sync.
The author of this thread: Fresh Detached Expo + RNFirebase not running on Android has managed to get it working with the Detached ExpoKit - so it's not a full ejection and keeps the expo features.
I have asked for the steps he took so we can see about getting something added to our docs and possibly a Detached ExpoKit version of our starter app.
See the expokit detaching docs for information about ExpoKit.
It's in progress --
https://blog.expo.io/using-firebase-in-expo-e13844061832
Using Firebase in Expo
And how we plan on adding it to the client 😁
We are super excited to announce that we will be rolling out a suite of Unimodules that will provide you with easy access to native Firebase features! initially you will only be able to use these in a detached ExpoKit App. But over time we will be working to add these to vanilla Expo.
TL;DR
Here are the modules, you will need to detach to add them for now:
App/Core
Analytics
Authentication
Cloud Firestore
Cloud Functions
Instance ID
Performance Monitor
Realtime Database
Cloud Storage
Remote Config
Firebase Cloud Messaging
Remote Notifications
Dynamic Linking
Invites
Crashlytics
Also TL;DR
Here is a boilerplate: https://github.com/EvanBacon/expo-native-firebase
Update 02-12-2021
Guys expo's eas-build is now public. You can add custom native codes and use react-native-firebase. Here is the link to a youtube tutorial. The video is short and super easy to follow. Here is the link to the docs
Previous answer
If you are using Firebase using the mobile configuration, it does not work, but it worked smoothly when I tried the web configuration. Here is the youtube tutorial. Watch from 38:20 to set up.
I managed to get a working set of react-native with redux, firestore and expo. See Code example at Github.
But it costs the offline-persistence (see https://github.com/firebase/firebase-js-sdk/issues/436). So from my point of view it costs performance, because i need to be online to get a full working app with firestore and react-native.

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