Firebase CLI

Node Package

You can install the Firebase CLI using npm (the Node Package Manager). Note that you will need to install Node.js and npm. Installing Node.js should install npm as well.

To download and install the Firebase CLI run the following command:

npm install -g firebase-tools

This will provide you with the globally accessible firebase command.

Standalone Binary

The standalone binary distribution of the Firebase CLI allows you to download a firebase executable without any dependencies.

To download and install the CLI run the following command:

curl -sL firebase.tools | bash

The command firebase --help lists the available commands and firebase <command> --help shows more details for an individual command.

If a command is project-specific, you must either be inside a project directory with an active project alias or specify the Firebase project id with the -P <project_id> flag.

Below is a brief list of the available commands and their function:

Configuration Commands

Append --no-localhost to login (i.e., firebase login --no-localhost) to copy and paste code instead of starting a local server for authentication. A use case might be if you SSH into an instance somewhere and you need to authenticate to Firebase on that machine.

Project Management Commands

Deployment and Local Emulation

These commands let you deploy and interact with your Firebase services.

App Distribution Commands

Auth Commands

Detailed doc is here.

Realtime Database Commands

Extensions Commands

Cloud Firestore Commands

Cloud Functions Commands

Hosting Commands

Remote Config Commands

Use firebase:deploy --only remoteconfig to update and publish a project's Firebase Remote Config template.

General

The Firebase CLI can use one of four authentication methods listed in descending priority:

• User Token - provide an explicit long-lived Firebase user token generated from firebase login:ci. Note that these tokens are extremely sensitive long-lived credentials and are not the right option for most cases. Consider using service account authorization instead. The token can be set in one of two ways:
  • Set the --token flag on any command, for example firebase --token="<token>" projects:list.
  • Set the FIREBASE_TOKEN environment variable.
• Local Login - run firebase login to log in to the CLI directly as yourself. The CLI will cache an authorized user credential on your machine.
• Service Account - set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to point to the path of a JSON service account key file.
• Application Default Credentials - if you use the gcloud CLI and log in with gcloud auth application-default login, the Firebase CLI will use them if none of the above credentials are present.

Cloud Functions Emulator

The Cloud Functions emulator is exposed through commands like emulators:start, serve and functions:shell. Emulated Cloud Functions run as independent node processes on your development machine which means they have their own credential discovery mechanism.

By default these node processes are not able to discover credentials from firebase login. In order to provide a better development experience, when you are logged in to the CLI through firebase login we take the user credentials and construct a temporary credential that we pass into the emulator through GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS. We only do this if you have not already set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable yourself.

The CLI supports HTTP(S) proxies via environment variables. To use a proxy, set the HTTPS_PROXY or HTTP_PROXY value in your environment to the URL of your proxy (e.g. HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:12345).

The Firebase CLI requires a browser to complete authentication, but is fully compatible with CI and other headless environments.

1. On a machine with a browser, install the Firebase CLI.
2. Run firebase login:ci to log in and print out a new refresh token (the current CLI session will not be affected).
3. Store the output token in a secure but accessible way in your CI system.

There are two ways to use this token when running Firebase commands:

1. Store the token as the environment variable FIREBASE_TOKEN and it will automatically be utilized.
2. Run all commands with the --token <token> flag in your CI system.

The order of precedence for token loading is flag, environment variable, active project.

On any machine with the Firebase CLI, running firebase logout --token <token> will immediately revoke access for the specified token.

The Firebase CLI can also be used programmatically as a standard Node module. Each command is exposed as a function that takes positional arguments followed by an options object and returns a Promise.

So if we run this command at our command line:

$ firebase --project="foo" apps:list ANDROID

That translates to the following in Node:

const client = require("firebase-tools");
client.apps
  .list("ANDROID", { project: "foo" })
  .then((data) => {
    // ...
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    // ...
  });

The options object must be the very last argument and any unspecified positional argument will get the default value of "". The following two invocations are equivalent:

const client = require("firebase-tools");

// #1 - No arguments or options, defaults will be inferred
client.apps.list();

// #2 - Explicitly provide "" for all arguments and {} for options
client.apps.list("", {});

Note: when used in a limited environment like Cloud Functions, not all firebase-tools commands will work programatically because they require access to a local filesystem.