I am considering using Firebase as MBaaS, however I couldn't find any reliable solution to the following problem:
I would like to set up two separate Firebase environments, one for development and one for production, but I don't want to do a manual copy of features (eg. remote configuration setup, notification rules, etc.) between the development and production environment.
Is there any tool or method I can rely on? Setting up remote configuration or notification rules from scratch can be a daunting task and too risky.
Any suggestions? Is there a better approach than having two separate environments?
Before you post another answer to the question which explains how to set up separate Firebase accounts: it is not the question, read it again. The question is: how to TRANSFER changes between separate dev and prod accounts or any better solution than manually copy between them.
If you are using firebase-tools there is a command firebase use which lets you set up which project you are using for firebase deploy
firebase use --add will bring up a list of your projects, select one and it will ask you for an alias. From there you can firebase use alias and firebase deploy will push to that project.
In my personal use, I have my-app and my-app-dev as projects in the Firebase console.
As everyone has pointed out - you need more than one project/database.
But to answer your question regarding the need to be able to copy settings/data etc from development to production. I had the exact same need. A few months in development and testing, I didn't want to manually copy the data.
My result was to backup the data to a storage bucket, and then restore it from there into the other database. It's a pretty crude way to do it - and I did a whole database backup/restore - but you might be able to look in that direction for a more controlled way. I haven't used it - it's very new - but this might be a solution: NPM Module firestore-export-import
Edit: Firestore backup/export/import info here Cloud Firestore Exporting and Importing Data
If you're using Firebase RTDB, and not Firestore - this documentation might help:
Firebase Automated Backups
You will need to set the permissions correctly to allow your production database access to the same storage bucket as your development.
Good luck.
I'm not currently using Firebase, but considering it like yourself. Looks like the way to go is to create a completely separate project on the console. There was a blogpost up recommending this on the old Firebase site, looks to be removed now though. https://web.archive.org/web/20160310115701/https://www.firebase.com/blog/2015-10-29-managing-development-environments.html
Also this discussion recommending same:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-talk/L7ajIJoHPcA/7dsNUTDlyRYJ
The way I did it:
I had 2 projects on firebase- one for DEV other for PROD
Locally my app also had 2 branches - one named DEV, the other named PROD
In my DEV branch I always have JSON file of DEV firebase project & likewise for PROD
This way I am not required to maintain my JSONs.
You will need to manage different build types
Follow this
First, create a new project at Firebase console, name id as YOURAPPNAME-DEV
Click "Add android app" button and create a new app. Name it com.yourapp.debug, for example. New google-services.json file will
be downloaded automatically
Under your project src directory create new directory with name "debug" and copy new google-services.json file here
In your module level build.gradle add this
debug {
applicationIdSuffix ".debug"
}
Now when you build a debug build google-services.json from "debug" folder will be used and when you will build in release mode google-services.json from module root directory will be considered.
I'm updating this answer based on information I just found.
Step 1
In firebase.google.com, create your multiple environments (i.e.; dev, staging, prod)
mysite-dev
mysite-staging
mysite-prod
Step 2
a. Move to the directly you want to be your default (i.e.; dev)
b. Run firebase deploy
c. Once deployed, run firebase use --add
d. An option will come up to select from the different projects you currently have.
Scroll to the project you want to add: mysite-staging, and select it.
e. You'll then be asked for an alias for that project. Enter staging.
Run items a-e again for prod and dev, so that each environment will have an alias
Know which environment you're in
Run firebase use
default (mysite-dev)
* dev (mysite-dev)
staging (mysite-staging)
prod (mysite-dev)
(one of the environments will have an asterisk to the left of it. That's the one you're currently in. It will also be highlighted in blue)
Switch between environments
Run firebase use staging or firebase use prod to move between them.
Once you're in the environment you want, run firebase deploy and your project will deploy there.
Here's a couple helpful links...
CLI Reference
Deploying to multiple environments
Hope this helps.
We chose to fire up instances of the new Firebase emulator on a local dev server for Test and UAT, leaving GCP out of the picture altogether. It's designed exactly for this use-case.
https://firebase.google.com/docs/emulator-suite
This blogpost describes a very simple approach with a debug and release build type.
In a nutshell:
Create a new App on Firebase for each build type using different application id suffix.
Configure your Android project with the latest JSON file.
Using applicationIdSuffix, change the Application Id to match the different Apps on Firebase depending on the build type.
=> see the blogpost for a detailed description.
If you want to use different build flavors, read this extensive blogpost from the official firebase blog. It contains a lot of valuable information.
Hope that helps!
To solve this for my situation I created three Firebase projects, each with the same Android project (i.e. same applicationId without using the applicationIdSuffix suggested by others). This resulted in three google-services.json files which I stored in my Continuous Integration (CI) server as custom environment variables. For each stage of the build (dev/staging/prod), I used the corresponding google-services.json file.
For the Firebase project associated with dev, in its Android project, I added the debug SHA certificate fingerprint. But for staging and prod I just have CI sign the APK.
Here is a stripped-down .gitlab-ci.yml that worked for this setup:
# This is a Gitlab Continuous Integration (CI) Pipeline definition
# Environment variables:
# - variables prefixed CI_ are Gitlab predefined environment variables (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/predefined_variables.html)
# - variables prefixed GNDR_CI are Gitlab custom environment variables (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/#creating-a-custom-environment-variable)
#
# We have three Firebase projects (dev, staging, prod) where the same package name is used across all of them but the
# debug signing certificate is only provided for the dev one (later if there are other developers, they can have their
# own Firebase project that's equivalent to the dev one). The staging and prod Firebase projects use real certificate
# signing so we don't need to enter a Debug signing certificate for them. We don't check the google-services.json into
# the repository. Instead it's provided at build time either on the developer's machine or by the Gitlab CI server
# which injects it via custom environment variables. That way the google-services.json can reside in the default
# location, the projects's app directory. The .gitlab-ci.yml is configured to copy the dev, staging, and prod equivalents
# of the google-servies.json file into that default location.
#
# References:
# https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/08/organizing-your-firebase-enabled-android-app-builds.html
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57129588/how-to-setup-firebase-for-multi-stage-release
stages:
- stg_build_dev
- stg_build_staging
- stg_build_prod
jb_build_dev:
stage: stg_build_dev
image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
cache:
key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
paths:
- .gradle/
script:
- cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_DEV_FILE} app/google-services.json
- ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
artifacts:
paths:
- app/build/outputs/apk/
jb_build_staging:
stage: stg_build_staging
image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
cache:
key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
paths:
- .gradle/
dependencies: []
script:
- cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_STAGING_FILE} app/google-services.json
- ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
artifacts:
paths:
- app/build/outputs/apk/
jb_build_prod:
stage: stg_build_prod
image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
cache:
key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
paths:
- .gradle/
dependencies: []
script:
- cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_PROD_FILE} app/google-services.json
# GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_FILE_BASE64_ENCODED created on Mac via:
# base64 --input ~/Desktop/gendr.keystore --output ~/Desktop/keystore_base64_encoded.txt
# Then the contents of keystore_base64_encoded.txt were copied and pasted as a Gitlab custom environment variable
# For more info see http://android.jlelse.eu/android-gitlab-ci-cd-sign-deploy-3ad66a8f24bf
- cat ${GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_FILE_BASE64_ENCODED} | base64 --decode > gendr.keystore
- ./gradlew :app:assembleRelease
-Pandroid.injected.signing.store.file=$(pwd)/gendr.keystore
-Pandroid.injected.signing.store.password=${GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD}
-Pandroid.injected.signing.key.alias=${GNDR_CI_KEY_ALIAS}
-Pandroid.injected.signing.key.password=${GNDR_CI_KEY_PASSWORD}
artifacts:
paths:
- app/build/outputs/apk/
I'm happy with this solution because it doesn't rely on build.gradle tricks which I believe are too opaque and thus hard to maintain. For example, when I tried the approaches using applicationIdSuffix and different buildTypes I found that I couldn't get instrumented tests to run or even compile when I tried to switch build types using testBuildType. Android seemed to give special properties to the debug buildType which I couldn't inspect to understand.
Virtuously, CI scrips though are quite transparent and easy to maintain, in my experience. Indeed, the approach I've described worked: When I ran each of the APKs generated by CI on an emulator, the Firebase console's "Run your app to verify installation" step went from
Checking if the app has communicated with our servers. You may need to uninstall and reinstall your app.
to:
Congratulations, you've successfully added Firebase to your app!
for all three apps as I started them one by one in an emulator.
Firebase has a page on this which goes through how to set it up for dev and prod
https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/config-env
Set environment configuration for your project To store environment
data, you can use the firebase functions:config:set command in the
Firebase CLI. Each key can be namespaced using periods to group
related configuration together. Keep in mind that only lowercase
characters are accepted in keys; uppercase characters are not allowed.
For instance, to store the Client ID and API key for "Some Service",
you might run:
firebase functions:config:set someservice.key="THE API KEY" someservice.id="THE CLIENT ID"
Retrieve current environment configuration To inspect what's currently
stored in environment config for your project, you can use firebase
functions:config:get. It will output JSON something like this:
{
"someservice": {
"key":"THE API KEY",
"id":"THE CLIENT ID"
}
}
Create the Tow project with Dev and production Environment on the firebase
Download the json file from thre
and setup the SDK as per : https://firebase.google.com/docs/android/setup Or for Crashlytics: https://firebase.google.com/docs/crashlytics/get-started?platform=android
First, place the respective google_services.json for each buildType in the following locations:
app/src/debug/google_services.json
app/src/test/google_services.json
app/google_services.json
Note: Root app/google_services.json This file should be there according to the build variants copy the json code in the root json file
Now, let’s whip up some gradle tasks in your: app’s build.gradle to automate moving the appropriate google_services.json to app/google_services.json
copy this in the app/Gradle file
task switchToDebug(type: Copy) {
description = 'Switches to DEBUG google-services.json'
from "src/debug"
include "google-services.json"
into "."
}
task switchToRelease(type: Copy) {
description = 'Switches to RELEASE google-services.json'
from "src/release"
include "google-services.json"
into "."
}
Great — but having to manually run these tasks before you build your app is cumbersome. We would want the appropriate copy task above run sometime before: assembleDebug or :assembleRelease is run. Let’s see what happens when :assembleRelease is run: copy this one in the /gradlew file
Zaks-MBP:my_awesome_application zak$ ./gradlew assembleRelease
Parallel execution is an incubating feature.
.... (other tasks)
:app:processReleaseGoogleServices
....
:app:assembleRelease
Notice the :app:processReleaseGoogleServices task. This task is responsible for processing the root google_services.json file. We want the correct google_services.json to be processed, so we must run our copy task immediately beforehand.
Add this to your build.gradle. Note the afterEvaluate enclosing.
copy this in the app/Gradle file
afterEvaluate {
processDebugGoogleServices.dependsOn switchToDebug
processReleaseGoogleServices.dependsOn switchToRelease
}
Now, anytime :app:processReleaseGoogleServices is called, our newly defined :app:switchToRelease will be called beforehand. Same logic for the debug buildType. You can run :app:assembleRelease and the release version google_services.json will be automatically copied to your app module’s root folder.
The way we are doing it is by creating different json key files for different environments. We have used service account feature as recommended by google and have one development file and another for production
Related
I am using GitHub Actions to implement a Continuous Integration process on a Clojure/ClojureScript dynamic web app project. It uses a library called shadow-cljs for the compilation.
At the end of my yaml file, I have the current approach:
- name: Execute a build report using shadow-cljs command shadow.cljs.build-report
run: npx shadow-cljs run shadow.cljs.build-report app build-reports/report.html
env:
TFR_RELEASE: my-instance-name
TFR_DEV: my-instance-name
As you see, I am using two environment variables TFR_RELEASE and TFR_DEV. These variables have their values being exported on my .zshrc file:
export TFR_RELEASE="my-instance-name"
export TFR_DEV="my-instance-name"
The values represent a firebase instance. This works. But, I would prefer to avoid hard coding them, since the instance may vary according to the developer or to the willingness to switch an instance.
Is it possible to make the script work without hardcoding the env values?
Or, what would be an alternative strategy? Maybe creating an instance on Firebase only for the CI build test instead of using my own instance?
You should use Github secrets to store environment variables.
On GitHub.com, navigate to the main page of the repository.
Under your repository name, click Settings.
In the "Security" section of the sidebar, select Secrets, then click Actions.
Click New repository secret.
Type a name for your secret in the Name input box.
Enter the value for your secret.
Click Add secret.
Then in your yml file,
- name: Execute a build report using shadow-cljs command shadow.cljs.build-report
run: npx shadow-cljs run shadow.cljs.build-report app build-reports/report.html env:
TFR_RELEASE: ${{ secrets.TFR_RELEASE}}
TFR_DEV: ${{ secrets.TFR_DEV}}
To access these github secrets in your code, use the "normal" method of your programming language to access an environment variable.
I have been using firebase to test apps. I set a certain project as the default. Now I would like to deploy a different project but do not understand how to remove the previous project as a default. (I have almost no experience using the terminal).
You can change the default project that the Firebase CLI uses in a directory by running:
firebase use --add
Then in the list of projects, select your project. And then finally for the alias name enter default (or whatever you entered before).
For a full list of the commands, have a look at the reference documentation of the Firebase CLI.
I am building a web application with Firebase. Currently I can say that I do have two stages - development, the firebase serve which runs the localhost and firebase deploy --only hosting which uploads the web application on Firebase hosting.
Everything is fine with that, but I do not see this as a professional solution. The problem that I see is that, my local environment and the live web application share the same database. I did quite some research on the topic and I understood that there is no way to have two databases per one project on Firebase. The solution that is offered out there, is to create two projects on Firebase, one for development and one for production. Or even if you want to, one for staging.
This solution seemed completely fine with me. It's a good idea for sure. Couple of projects, for couple of environments, separate databases, just perfect. Then just before implementing this solution another problem bumped in my head. If I say, let's create a staging project, in order to serve me as a staging environment, and I decide to deploy my web application, the staging web application will be publicly available, so it will also get indexed by Google and so on.
So, what could you advice me in this situation? How can I make sure that my staging web application (hosted on the staging Firebase app) will not be available for others and will not be indexed by search engines. I thought about white-listing IPs or VPC, but I have no clue how to proceed in a way that is free and reliable.
In case anyone has this question, there's an article on the Firebase Blog about this.
Note: This Firebase article assumes that you have already created a second Firebase project for this new environment (i.e. project-dev), and have copied the config details into your working env (i.e. project-dev). Master and dev are two different env, so it makes sense to have two different Firebase configs.
The article states:
Fortunately for us, the Firebase CLI makes it simple to setup and deploy to multiple environments.
Adding and switching between environments with the Firebase CLI is as
simple as one command: firebase use.
$ firebase use --add
This command prompts you to choose from one of your existing projects
Select the project you want to use for a different environment, and then give it an alias. The alias can really be whatever you want, but it’s common to use aliases like “development”, “staging”, or “production”.
Once you’ve created a new alias, it will be set as the current
environment for deployment. Running firebase deploy will deploy your
app to that environment.
Switching environments
If you want to switch to another environment, just provide the alias in the use command.
$ firebase use default # sets environment to the default alias
$ firebase use staging # sets environment to the staging alias
For a single command, you can also specify the environment using the -P flag:
$ firebase deploy -P staging # deploy to staging alias
Hope that helps!
Edit: The following solution is for Firebase "Realtime Database". It does not apply to "Firestore". Read the difference here.
1. Firebase Realtime Databases Sharding
Now (2018 March), Firebase Realtime Database allows you to create multiple instance.
Official Document: Scale with Multiple Databases
Go to your Firebase Project
In the Firebase console, go to the Data tab in the Develop > Database section.
Select Create new database from the menu in the Databases section (upper right corner).
Customize your Database reference and Security rules, then click Got it.
(Optional) Modify the Security rule and Backup option of the new instance.
2. Usage
// Get the default database instance for an app
var database = firebase.database();
// Get a secondary database instance by URL
var database = firebase.database('https://testapp-1234.firebaseio.com');
3. Example Usage: Different Environment
firebase-config.js
const BUILD_LEVEL = "dev";
// const BUILD_LEVEL = 'stage'
// const BUILD_LEVEL = 'prod'
let config = {
apiKey: "your_apiKey",
authDomain: "your_authDomain",
projectId: "your_projectId",
storageBucket: "your_storageBucket",
messagingSenderId: "your_messagingSenderId"
};
if (BUILD_LEVEL === "dev") {
config.databaseURL = "https://your-project-dev.firebaseio.com/";
} else if (BUILD_LEVEL === "stage") {
config.databaseURL = "https://your-project-stage.firebaseio.com";
} else if (BUILD_LEVEL === "prod") {
config.databaseURL = "https://your-project-dev.firebaseio.com";
}
firebase.initializeApp(config);
Now to change the Firebase Database instance, you only need to change the BUILD_LEVEL variable.
Combine this feature with Git/Github/Gitlab workflow, Git hook, webpack, CI/CD tool, and you have a very flexible solution.
I have 3 stages (dev / staging / production). I've successfully set up publishing for each, so that the code will be deployed, using msbuild, to the correct location, with the correct web configs transformed - all within Jenkins.
The problem I'm having is that I don't know to deploy the code to staging from what was built on dev (and staging to production). I'm currently using SVN as the source control, so I think I would need to somehow save the latest revision number dev has built and somehow tell Jenkins to build/deploy staging based on that number?
Is there a way to do this, or a better alternative?
Any help would be appreciated.
Edit: Decided to use the save the revision number method, which parses a file containing the revision number to the next job -- to do this, I followed this answer:
How to promote a specific build number from another job in Jenkins?
It explains how to copy an artifact from one job to another using the promotion plugin. For the artifact itself, I added a "Execute Windows batch command" build step after the main build with:
echo DEV_ENVIRONMENT_CORE_REVISION:%SVN_REVISION%>env.properties
Then in the staging job, using that above guide, copied that file, and then using a plugin EnvInject, to read from that file and set an environment variable, which can then be used as a parameter to the SVN Repository URL.
You should be able to identify the changeset number that was built in DEV and manually pass that changeset to the Jenkins build to pull that same changeset from SVN. Obviously that makes your deployment more manual. Maybe you can setup Jenkins to publish the changeset number to a file and then have the later env build to read that file for the changeset number.
We used to use this model as well and it was always complex. Eventually we moved to a build once and deploy many times model using WebDeploy. This has made the process much more simple. Check it out - http://www.dotnetcatch.com/2016/04/16/msbuild-once-msdeploy-many-times/
We have an app with web and worker nodes - the code for both is in the same git but gets deployed to different autoscaling groups. The problem is that there is only one appspec file, however the deployment scripts (AfterInstall, AppStart, etc.) for the web/worker nodes are different. How would I go about setting my CodeDeploy to deploy both apps and execute different deployment scripts ?
(Right now we have an appspec file that just invokes chef recipes that execute different actions based on the role of the node)
I know this question is very old, but I had the same question/issue recently and found an easy way to make it work.
I have added two appspec files on the same git: appspec-staging.yml, appspec-storybook.yml.
Also added two buildspec files buildspec-staging.yml, buildspec-storybook.yml(AWS CodeBuild allows specify the buildspec file).
The idea is after the build is done, we will copy and rename the specific appspec-xx.yml file to the final appspec.yml file, so finally, in the stage of CodeDeploy, we will have a proper appspec.yml file to deploy. Below command is for linux environment.
post_build:
commands:
- mv appspec-staging.yml appspec.yml
Update - according to an Amazon technical support representative it is not possible.
They recommend having separate gits for different environments (prod,staging,dev,etc.) and different apps.
Makes it harder to share code, but probably doable.
You can make use of environment variables exposed by the agent in your deployment scripts to identify which deployment group is being deployed.
Here's how you can use them https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/application-management/post/Tx1PX2XMPLYPULD/Using-CodeDeploy-Environment-Variables
Thanks,
Surya.
The way I have got around this is to have an appspec.yml.web and an appspec.yml.worker in the root of the project. I then have two jobs in Jenkins; one each that correspond to the worker and the web deployments. In each, it renames the appropriate one to be just appspec.yml and does the bundling to send to codedeploy.