Separate dev and prod Firebase environment

I am considering using Firebase as MBaaS, however I couldn't find any reliable solution to the following problem:

I would like to set up two separate Firebase environments, one for development and one for production, but I don't want to do a manual copy of features (eg. remote configuration setup, notification rules, etc.) between the development and production environment.

Is there any tool or method I can rely on? Setting up remote configuration or notification rules from scratch can be a daunting task and too risky.

Any suggestions? Is there a better approach than having two separate environments?

Before you post another answer to the question which explains how to set up separate Firebase accounts: it is not the question, read it again. The question is: how to TRANSFER changes between separate dev and prod accounts or any better solution than manually copy between them.

If you are using firebase-tools there is a command firebase use which lets you set up which project you are using for firebase deploy

firebase use --add will bring up a list of your projects, select one and it will ask you for an alias. From there you can firebase use alias and firebase deploy will push to that project.

In my personal use, I have my-app and my-app-dev as projects in the Firebase console.

As everyone has pointed out - you need more than one project/database.

But to answer your question regarding the need to be able to copy settings/data etc from development to production. I had the exact same need. A few months in development and testing, I didn't want to manually copy the data.

My result was to backup the data to a storage bucket, and then restore it from there into the other database. It's a pretty crude way to do it - and I did a whole database backup/restore - but you might be able to look in that direction for a more controlled way. I haven't used it - it's very new - but this might be a solution: NPM Module firestore-export-import

Edit: Firestore backup/export/import info here Cloud Firestore Exporting and Importing Data

If you're using Firebase RTDB, and not Firestore - this documentation might help: Firebase Automated Backups

You will need to set the permissions correctly to allow your production database access to the same storage bucket as your development. Good luck.

I'm not currently using Firebase, but considering it like yourself. Looks like the way to go is to create a completely separate project on the console. There was a blogpost up recommending this on the old Firebase site, looks to be removed now though. https://web.archive.org/web/20160310115701/https://www.firebase.com/blog/2015-10-29-managing-development-environments.html

Also this discussion recommending same: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-talk/L7ajIJoHPcA/7dsNUTDlyRYJ

The way I did it:

1. I had 2 projects on firebase- one for DEV other for PROD
2. Locally my app also had 2 branches - one named DEV, the other named PROD
3. In my DEV branch I always have JSON file of DEV firebase project & likewise for PROD

This way I am not required to maintain my JSONs.

You will need to manage different build types

Follow this

1. First, create a new project at Firebase console, name id as YOURAPPNAME-DEV

2. Click "Add android app" button and create a new app. Name it com.yourapp.debug, for example. New google-services.json file will be downloaded automatically

3. Under your project src directory create new directory with name "debug" and copy new google-services.json file here

4. In your module level build.gradle add this

   debug {
           applicationIdSuffix ".debug"
       }
   

Now when you build a debug build google-services.json from "debug" folder will be used and when you will build in release mode google-services.json from module root directory will be considered.

I'm updating this answer based on information I just found.

Step 1

In firebase.google.com, create your multiple environments (i.e.; dev, staging, prod)

---

mysite-dev

mysite-staging

mysite-prod

---

Step 2

a. Move to the directly you want to be your default (i.e.; dev)

b. Run firebase deploy

c. Once deployed, run firebase use --add

d. An option will come up to select from the different projects you currently have.

Scroll to the project you want to add: mysite-staging, and select it.

e. You'll then be asked for an alias for that project. Enter staging.

Run items a-e again for prod and dev, so that each environment will have an alias

---

Know which environment you're in

Run firebase use default (mysite-dev)

* dev (mysite-dev)

staging (mysite-staging)

prod (mysite-dev)

(one of the environments will have an asterisk to the left of it. That's the one you're currently in. It will also be highlighted in blue)

---

Switch between environments

Run firebase use staging or firebase use prod to move between them.

Once you're in the environment you want, run firebase deploy and your project will deploy there.

Here's a couple helpful links...

CLI Reference

Deploying to multiple environments

Hope this helps.

We chose to fire up instances of the new Firebase emulator on a local dev server for Test and UAT, leaving GCP out of the picture altogether. It's designed exactly for this use-case.

https://firebase.google.com/docs/emulator-suite

This blogpost describes a very simple approach with a debug and release build type.

In a nutshell:

> - Create a new App on Firebase for each build type using different application id suffix.

• Configure your Android project with the latest JSON file.
• Using applicationIdSuffix, change the Application Id to match the different Apps on Firebase depending on the build type.

=> see the blogpost for a detailed description.

If you want to use different build flavors, read this extensive blogpost from the official firebase blog. It contains a lot of valuable information.

Hope that helps!

To solve this for my situation I created three Firebase projects, each with the same Android project (i.e. same applicationId without using the applicationIdSuffix suggested by others). This resulted in three google-services.json files which I stored in my Continuous Integration (CI) server as custom environment variables. For each stage of the build (dev/staging/prod), I used the corresponding google-services.json file.

For the Firebase project associated with dev, in its Android project, I added the debug SHA certificate fingerprint. But for staging and prod I just have CI sign the APK.

Here is a stripped-down .gitlab-ci.yml that worked for this setup:

# This is a Gitlab Continuous Integration (CI) Pipeline definition
# Environment variables:
#   - variables prefixed CI_ are Gitlab predefined environment variables (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/predefined_variables.html)
#   - variables prefixed GNDR_CI are Gitlab custom environment variables (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/#creating-a-custom-environment-variable)
#
# We have three Firebase projects (dev, staging, prod) where the same package name is used across all of them but the
# debug signing certificate is only provided for the dev one (later if there are other developers, they can have their
# own Firebase project that's equivalent to the dev one).  The staging and prod Firebase projects use real certificate
# signing so we don't need to enter a Debug signing certificate for them.  We don't check the google-services.json into
# the repository.  Instead it's provided at build time either on the developer's machine or by the Gitlab CI server
# which injects it via custom environment variables.  That way the google-services.json can reside in the default
# location, the projects's app directory.  The .gitlab-ci.yml is configured to copy the dev, staging, and prod equivalents
# of the google-servies.json file into that default location.
#
# References:
# https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/08/organizing-your-firebase-enabled-android-app-builds.html
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57129588/how-to-setup-firebase-for-multi-stage-release

stages:
  - stg_build_dev
  - stg_build_staging
  - stg_build_prod

jb_build_dev:
  stage: stg_build_dev
  image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
  cache:
    key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
    paths:
      - .gradle/
  script:
    - cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_DEV_FILE} app/google-services.json
    - ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - app/build/outputs/apk/

jb_build_staging:
  stage: stg_build_staging
  image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
  cache:
    key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
    paths:
      - .gradle/
  dependencies: []
  script:
    - cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_STAGING_FILE} app/google-services.json
    - ./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - app/build/outputs/apk/

jb_build_prod:
  stage: stg_build_prod
  image: jangrewe/gitlab-ci-android
  cache:
    key: ${CI_PROJECT_ID}-android
    paths:
      - .gradle/
  dependencies: []
  script:
    - cp ${GNDR_CI_GOOGLE_SERVICES_JSON_PROD_FILE} app/google-services.json

    # GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_FILE_BASE64_ENCODED created on Mac via:
    # base64 --input ~/Desktop/gendr.keystore --output ~/Desktop/keystore_base64_encoded.txt
    # Then the contents of keystore_base64_encoded.txt were copied and pasted as a Gitlab custom environment variable
    # For more info see http://android.jlelse.eu/android-gitlab-ci-cd-sign-deploy-3ad66a8f24bf
    - cat ${GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_FILE_BASE64_ENCODED} | base64 --decode > gendr.keystore

    - ./gradlew :app:assembleRelease
      -Pandroid.injected.signing.store.file=$(pwd)/gendr.keystore
      -Pandroid.injected.signing.store.password=${GNDR_CI_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD}
      -Pandroid.injected.signing.key.alias=${GNDR_CI_KEY_ALIAS}
      -Pandroid.injected.signing.key.password=${GNDR_CI_KEY_PASSWORD}
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - app/build/outputs/apk/

I'm happy with this solution because it doesn't rely on build.gradle tricks which I believe are too opaque and thus hard to maintain. For example, when I tried the approaches using applicationIdSuffix and different buildTypes I found that I couldn't get instrumented tests to run or even compile when I tried to switch build types using testBuildType. Android seemed to give special properties to the debug buildType which I couldn't inspect to understand.

Virtuously, CI scrips though are quite transparent and easy to maintain, in my experience. Indeed, the approach I've described worked: When I ran each of the APKs generated by CI on an emulator, the Firebase console's "Run your app to verify installation" step went from

> Checking if the app has communicated with our servers. You may need to uninstall and reinstall your app.

to:

> Congratulations, you've successfully added Firebase to your app!

for all three apps as I started them one by one in an emulator.

Firebase has a page on this which goes through how to set it up for dev and prod

https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/config-env

> Set environment configuration for your project To store environment > data, you can use the firebase functions:config:set command in the > Firebase CLI. Each key can be namespaced using periods to group > related configuration together. Keep in mind that only lowercase > characters are accepted in keys; uppercase characters are not allowed. > > For instance, to store the Client ID and API key for "Some Service", > you might run: > > firebase functions:config:set someservice.key="THE API KEY" someservice.id="THE CLIENT ID" > > Retrieve current environment configuration To inspect what's currently > stored in environment config for your project, you can use firebase > functions:config:get. It will output JSON something like this: > > { > "someservice": { > "key":"THE API KEY", > "id":"THE CLIENT ID" > } > }

Create the Tow project with Dev and production Environment on the firebase Download the json file from thre

and setup the SDK as per : https://firebase.google.com/docs/android/setup Or for Crashlytics: https://firebase.google.com/docs/crashlytics/get-started?platform=android

First, place the respective google_services.json for each buildType in the following locations:

app/src/debug/google_services.json
app/src/test/google_services.json
app/google_services.json

Note: Root app/google_services.json This file should be there according to the build variants copy the json code in the root json file

Now, let’s whip up some gradle tasks in your: app’s build.gradle to automate moving the appropriate google_services.json to app/google_services.json

copy this in the app/Gradle file

task switchToDebug(type: Copy) {
description = 'Switches to DEBUG google-services.json'
from "src/debug"
include "google-services.json"
into "."
}

task switchToRelease(type: Copy) {
description = 'Switches to RELEASE google-services.json'
from "src/release"
include "google-services.json"
into "."
}

Great — but having to manually run these tasks before you build your app is cumbersome. We would want the appropriate copy task above run sometime before: assembleDebug or :assembleRelease is run. Let’s see what happens when :assembleRelease is run: copy this one in the /gradlew file

Zaks-MBP:my_awesome_application zak$ ./gradlew assembleRelease
Parallel execution is an incubating feature.
.... (other tasks)
:app:processReleaseGoogleServices
....
:app:assembleRelease

Notice the :app:processReleaseGoogleServices task. This task is responsible for processing the root google_services.json file. We want the correct google_services.json to be processed, so we must run our copy task immediately beforehand. Add this to your build.gradle. Note the afterEvaluate enclosing.

copy this in the app/Gradle file

afterEvaluate {
processDebugGoogleServices.dependsOn switchToDebug
processReleaseGoogleServices.dependsOn switchToRelease
}

Now, anytime :app:processReleaseGoogleServices is called, our newly defined :app:switchToRelease will be called beforehand. Same logic for the debug buildType. You can run :app:assembleRelease and the release version google_services.json will be automatically copied to your app module’s root folder.

The way we are doing it is by creating different json key files for different environments. We have used service account feature as recommended by google and have one development file and another for production