CLI tool

The Firebase CLI tool enables several workflows:

• Emulate the Firebase backend locally, to run it and debug it at no cost and without a deploy step.
• Scaffold the Cloud Functions' directory, and deploy Cloud Functions.
• Submit secrets and API keys to Google, making them available to Cloud Functions.
• Add and deploy security rules.
• List the Firebase projects linked to the Google account.

the CLI executable

The firebase-tools package installs the firebase CLI executable.

npm install -g firebase-tools
firebase

Release notes

underlying Google account

Firebase projects are linked to a Google account.

firebase login:list # prints current Google account
firebase login
firebase logout

list projects and select one

firebase projects:list
firebase use imagetales

project configuration and scaffolding

The init command enables several workflows. We can:

• scaffold the Cloud Functions directory
• set up and configure emulators
• add security rules for Firestore and Cloud Storage

firebase init

help

• print the list of Firebase commands.
• print the details about a given command.

firebase help

firebase help emulators:start
firebase help deploy

list deployed functions, deploy functions

firebase functions:list

firebase deploy --only functions
firebase deploy --only functions:requestPlanet

manage secrets

firebase functions:secrets:access ABC_API_KEY
firebase functions:secrets:set ABC_API_KEY
firebase functions:secrets:destroy ABC_API_KEY

start and config emulators

firebase emulators:start
firebase emulators:start --import emulator-data --export-on-exit

We set which emulators to run with firebase.json. We scaffold this file with firebase init. If the port is omitted, the emulator uses the default one.

{
    "emulators": {
        "firestore": { "port": 8080 },
        "auth": { "port": 9099 },
        "functions": { "port": 5001 },
        "storage": { "port": 9199 },
        "ui": { "enabled": true }
    }
}

manage and deploy security rules

The storage emulator requires storage access rules.

• We define Storage rules in storage.rules.
• We define Firestore rules in firestore.rules
• We refer to the rules in firebase.json:

{
    "storage": { "rules": "storage.rules" },
    "firestore": {
        "rules": "firestore.rules",
        "indexes": "firestore.indexes.json"
    }
}

We deploy the rules:

firebase deploy --only storage
firebase deploy --only firestore:rules

gcloud: Google Cloud CLI tool

gcloud enables some operations not available with the firebase tool, such as listing secrets of a given project or describing a Storage bucket.

We call gcloud from the Google Cloud Console's Cloud Shell (it is pre-installed), or we install it locally from an archive provided by Google.

gcloud secrets list --project <PROJECT_ID>
gcloud storage buckets describe gs://abcd.firebasestorage.app