I'm initializing my firebase functions like so:

admin.initializeApp(functions.config().firebase)

I've generated a service account key which I believe I need to do for auth purpouses.

It gave me a json table with various key/values.

The instructions were to add that in admin.initializeApp like so:

var serviceAccount = require("path/to/serviceAccountKey.json");

admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
  databaseURL: "https://<DATABASE_NAME>.firebaseio"
});

Which is very different to how I'md oing it.

I'm not even sure I need to do this though because I do have access to firestore using my previous method, however auth with valid user id tokens is not working giving me the following error in firebase:

ERROR: Error: Decoding Firebase ID token failed. Make sure you passed the entire string JWT which represents an ID token. See for details on how to retrieve an ID token.

and from sniffing around it looked like the missing thing was the admin sdk service account..

I'm initializing my firebase functions like so:

admin.initializeApp(functions.config().firebase)

I've generated a service account key which I believe I need to do for auth purpouses.

It gave me a json table with various key/values.

The instructions were to add that in admin.initializeApp like so:

var serviceAccount = require("path/to/serviceAccountKey.json");

admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
  databaseURL: "https://<DATABASE_NAME>.firebaseio."
});

Which is very different to how I'md oing it.

I'm not even sure I need to do this though because I do have access to firestore using my previous method, however auth with valid user id tokens is not working giving me the following error in firebase:

ERROR: Error: Decoding Firebase ID token failed. Make sure you passed the entire string JWT which represents an ID token. See https://firebase.google./docs/auth/admin/verify-id-tokens for details on how to retrieve an ID token.

and from sniffing around it looked like the missing thing was the admin sdk service account..

• javascript
• firebase
• google-cloud-functions
• firebase-admin

Share Follow edited Dec 17, 2017 at 4:50 Frank van Puffelen 601k8585 gold badges890890 silver badges860860 bronze badges asked Dec 17, 2017 at 2:47 medsmeds 23k4242 gold badges175175 silver badges337337 bronze badges 1

• Looks like the ID token passed to verifyIdToken() is malformed somehow. Can you try logging it in the server-side and see what turns up? – Hiranya Jayathilaka Commented Dec 17, 2017 at 6:11

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 5

This snippet is a general way to initialize the Firebase Admin SDK for Node.js:

var serviceAccount = require("path/to/serviceAccountKey.json");

admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
  databaseURL: "https://<DATABASE_NAME>.firebaseio."
});

As you've seen, it requires that you download a JSON file from the console, and add it to the path.

This is a bit finicky, and some developers find it hard to get working. Since the Cloud Functions environment is fully under Firebase's control, it was made a bit easier there. Your other snippet shows how:

admin.initializeApp()

Both snippets acplish the same thing, but the latter only works in Cloud Functions for Firebase.