LukeSchlangen / nodeFire

AngularFire with token authentication on node backend server

nodeFire

AngularFire with token authentication on Node backend server

Get Started with nodeFire

1. Run these commands to add the project locally:

$ git clone https://github.com/LukeSchlangen/nodeFire
$ cd nodeFire
$ npm install

2. Create a free Firebase account at https://firebase.google.com

3. Create a project from your Firebase account console

4. Add a connection to firebase on your front end

   1. Click the “Add Firebase to your web app” icon
   2. Copy the contents WITHOUT SCRIPT TAGS or the CDN from the resulting popup into public/scripts/config.js. It should look like this:

  // Initialize Firebase
  var config = {
    apiKey: "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
    authDomain: "XXXXXXXXXXXX.firebaseapp.com",
    databaseURL: "https://XXXXXXXXXXXX.firebaseio.com",
    storageBucket: "XXXXXXXXXXXX.appspot.com",
    messagingSenderId: "XXXXXXXXXX"
  };
  firebase.initializeApp(config);

5. Add a firebase service account to you node project

   1. Navigate to the Service Accounts tab in your project's settings page.
   2. Select your Firebase project.
   3. Copy your databaseURL from the Admin SDK configuration snippet. The line you need will look like this: databaseURL: "https://XXXXXXXXX.firebaseio.com".
   4. Navigate to the server/modules/decoder.js file in the node project and replace the databaseURL. Only replace that line. It is inside of the admin.initializeApp:

   admin.initializeApp({
     credential: admin.credential.cert("./server/firebase-service-account.json"),
     databaseURL: "https://XXXXXXXXX.firebaseio.com" // replace this line with your URL
   });

   5. Return to firebase Service Accounts. Navigate to your project again if you have left it.
   6. Click the Generate New Private Key button at the bottom of the Firebase Admin SDK section of the Service Accounts tab.
   7. Rename the new JSON file to firebase-service-account.json and save it in the server folder of your application.

6. Return to Firebase console. Configure Google as an authentication provider for your Firebase project.

   1. In the Firebase console for your project (you may already be there from the previous step), click "Authentication" in left panel
   2. Click "Set Up Sign-In Method" button
   3. Select "Google"
   4. Click the "edit" icon
   5. Toggle Google to on

7. Run npm start to run your application on localhost:5000

Deploying

This is incredibly tedious the first time, but will automatically deploy your application with every future change. In order to deploy this project publicly, you will likely need to add your service account properties as environment variables. Here is how to do that with Heroku:

1. Convert firebase-service-account to .env variables

   1. Add dotenv to you project through npm install --save dotenv.

   2. Add a .env file to the root folder of your project. Copy this text into that file (note that there are no commas):

      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TYPE="XXXXXXXXX"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PROJECT_ID="XXXXXXXXX"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PRIVATE_KEY_ID="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PRIVATE_KEY="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nA Whole lot of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_EMAIL="[e-mail]"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_ID="##################"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_AUTH_URI="https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN_URI="https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_AUTH_PROVIDER_X509_CERT_URL="https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs"
      FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_X509_CERT_URL="https://www.googleapis.com/XXXXXXXXXXX.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
      

      Replace every value from the right hand side of the equal sign inside of quotes in the .env file with the corresponding secret key from your firebase-service-account.json file:

      {
        "type": "XXXXXXXXX",
        "project_id": "XXXXXXXXX",
        "private_key_id": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
        "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nA Whole lot of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
        "client_email": "[e-mail]",
        "client_id": "##################",
        "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
        "token_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token",
        "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
        "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/XXXXXXXXXXX.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
      }

   3. Navigate to server/modules/decoder.js. Replace the reference to your firebase-service-account.json with an object that refers to all of your .env variables.

      admin.initializeApp({
        credential: admin.credential.cert("./server/firebase-service-account.json"),
        databaseURL: "https://my-firebase-app.firebaseio.com" // you replaced this line earlier
      });

      Now becomes

      admin.initializeApp({
        credential: admin.credential.cert({
          "type": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TYPE,
          "project_id": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PROJECT_ID,
          "private_key_id": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PRIVATE_KEY_ID,
          "private_key": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PRIVATE_KEY,
          "client_email": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_EMAIL,
          "client_id": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_ID,
          "auth_uri": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_AUTH_URI,
          "token_uri": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN_URI,
          "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_AUTH_PROVIDER_X509_CERT_URL,
          "client_x509_cert_url": process.env.FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CLIENT_X509_CERT_URL
        }),
        databaseURL: "https://my-firebase-app.firebaseio.com"
      });

   4. In the server/app.js file, add require('dotenv').config(); near the top of the file (as the first line is ideal)

2. Deploy to Heroku

   1. Create an Heroku account.
   2. Create a new Heroku Application.
   3. Under the Settings tab, in the Config Variables section, select Reveal Config Vars. Here you will need to add every configuration variable to the list (everything on the left side of the equals sign in your .env file is the key, everything on the right side is the value)
   4. Under the Deploy tab, in the Deployment Method section, select Github. Connect to the Github repository with your application.
   5. In the Manual Deploy section, click Deploy Branch to deploy for the first time.

3. Update firebase to allow another domain

   1. Return to the firebase console and select your current project.
   2. If the link from the step above doesn't navigate you there automatically, navigate to authentication in the left hand navigation and select SIGN-IN MMETHOD
   3. Scroll down to the OAuth redirect domains section and click the ADD DOMAIN button
   4. Add the new domain that your site is being hosted on, likely something like https://rushing-waterfall.herokuapp.com/

Contributing

1. The repository is open to contribution from all interested developers. Kindly send us Pull Requests with explanation as to what changes you have done.
2. Also, you can write to us by opening an Issue and also solve a current issue if possible.

License

1. The software is registered under the MIT License