Project Deprecated!

This project has reached its end-of-life, and will no longer be maintained. For information about the official alternative from the Firebase team, have a look at the Firebase Local Emulators Migration Guide.

Moving forward, new features will not be added, and only security-related bugfixes will be released.

firebase-server

Firebase Web Socket Protocol Server. Useful for emulating the Firebase server in tests.

Copyright (C) 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, Uri Shaked and contributors

Installation

You can install firebase-server through npm:

npm install --save-dev firebase-server

or yarn:

yarn add -D firebase-server

Usage examples

const FirebaseServer = require('firebase-server');

new FirebaseServer(5000, 'localhost', {
  states: {
    CA: 'California',
    AL: 'Alabama',
    KY: 'Kentucky'
  }
});

After running this server, you can create a Firebase client instance that connects to it:

import * as firebase from 'firebase/app';
import 'firebase/database';

const app = firebase.initializeApp({
  databaseURL: `ws://localhost:5000`,
});

app.database().ref().on('value', (snap) => {
  console.log('Got value: ', snap.val());
});

Setup with global test hooks

In the case of Mocha, you'd do something like the example below.

// => e.g. global-test-hooks.js
const FirebaseServer = require("firebase-server");

let firebaseServer;

before(() => {
   firebaseServer = new FirebaseServer(5000, "localhost");
});

after(async () => {
   await firebaseServer.close();
});

// => require the file with the --file flag
mocha --file /path/to/global-test-hooks.js

Command Line Interface

This package installs a CLI script called firebase-server. It can be installed locally or globally. If installed locally, use the following path to start the server: ./node_modules/.bin/firebase-server

The following command will start a firebase server on port 5555:

firebase-server -p 5555

... and with a specified bind IP address:

firebase-server -p 5555 -a 0.0.0.0

To bootstrap the server with some data you can use the -d,--data or the -f,--file option. Note: The file option will override the data option.

firebase-server -d '{"foo": "bar"}'

firebase-server -f ./path/to/data.json

To load Firebase Security rules upon startup you can use the -r,--rules option.

firebase-server -r ./path/to/rules.json

You can also specify a shared client auth token secret with the -s argument:

firebase-server -s some-shared-secret

To enable REST API, run:

firebase-server -e

Note: currently REST API does not implement authentication or authorization.

To daemonize the server process, use:

firebase-server -b

To write the PID to a file, use:

firebase-server --pid /var/run/firebase-server.pid

_Note: PID file can be written with or without daemonization, and is NOT written by default when daemonizing.

For more information, run:

firebase-server -h

FirebaseServer methods

The constructor signature is FirebaseServer(portOrOptions, name, data) where portOrOptions is either a port number or a WebSocket.Server options object with either port or server set. name is optional and is just used to report the server name to clients. data is the initial contents of the database.

If you want the server to pick a free port for you, simply use the value 0 for the port. You can then get the assigned port number by calling the getPort() method on the returned server object.

FirebaseServer instances have the following API:

• close(): Promise - Stops the server (closes the server socket)
• getValue() - Returns a promise that will be resolved with the current data on the server
• exportData() - Returns a promise that will be resolved with the current data on the server, including priority values. This is similar to DataSnapshot.exportVal().
• address() - Returns the address the server is listening on
• port(): number - Returns the port number the server is listening on
• setRules(rules) - Sets the security rules for the server. Uses the targaryen library for rule validation.
• setAuthSecret(secret) - Sets the shared secret used for validating Custom Authentication Tokens.
• setTime(timestamp) - Sets the server time. The server time is returned by ServerValue.TIMESTAMP and is also used for checking the validity of Custom Authentication Tokens.

Debug logging

This project uses the excellent debug module for logging. It is configured by setting an environment variable:

$ DEBUG=* mocha                                # log everything
$ DEBUG=firebase-server* mocha                 # log everything from firebase-server
$ DEBUG=firebase-server:token-generator mocha  # log output from specific submodule

Advanced options are available from the debug docs

License

Released under the terms of MIT License:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.