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Question

Best way to manage private key for Firebase Connection?

Hi

I am deploying an app using DigitalOcean Apps (Which was amazingly straightforward by the way!) However I can’t work out how to handle keys for my Firebase Admin connection. The docs specify that a JSON file should hold all the params: https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup

The safest way to handle these creds securely would seem to be to use a build command to pull the JSON file from a store. (I want to use an environment variable to pull the right JSON file according to which environment I am deploying).

I was hoping to use a DO Space, but there appears to be no easy way to pull from it using a Build command as it needs to use the S3 API/ SDK which is not available to a build command for an App. Does anyone know how I might go about pulling this at build time?

Only other thing I can think is to run a shell script that builds my JSON from environment variables, but that seems like a sub-optimal solution!

Any suggestions welcome as I am quite new to this!

Thanks

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ralrom • April 4, 2022

A less well known way to initialize the SDK is to use the cert function. Then you can simply pass the config as a single line JSON string (as an env var):

import { cert, initializeApp } from "firebase-admin/app";


initializeApp({
  credential: cert(JSON.parse(process.env.FIREBASE_ADMIN_SDK_CONFIG)),
});

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