Allow development of Firebase Cloud Functions

[Bielik20]

Cloud Functions are a great way of developing a micro-service based backend. Just like with node backend it is common to share types and some business logic between the two. Could we come up with some way of integrating them with an Nx Workspace? What are the things that people would like to see in that area?

Current Behavior

No easy way of integrating a Cloud Functions within an Nx Workspace.

Expected Behavior

Developers should be able to easily develop a Cloud Functions backend within an Nx Workspace.

[jmarbutt]

I am interested in this but I am not sure what all I would want on this to make it work easier.

[jmarbutt]

I would like to see it easier to build out the functions project while referencing libraries. Here are some other ideas:

• Add Triggers for FireStore, Storage, Http, etc (with tests)
• Emulate Firestore
• Unit Testing Functions
• Add Function to core index so it is exported correctly.

I think that is it off the top of my head.

[Bielik20]

I think we could divide it into milestones:

1. MVP
   1. Scaffold Cloud Functions project that uses the root package.json (does not create a new one)
   2. Cloud Functions can reference 'libs'
   3. Triggers
2. Emulate Firestore / Local development
3. Unit Testing Functions

Can we agree on that? Did I miss something?

[jmarbutt]

Yeah I think that is perfect

[Bielik20]

@FrozenPandaz I think this feature has gained quite a popularity. I do realize that there may be other, more important tasks on hand, but we would like to get an update if there are even plans to take it on.

[Bielik20]

I am not sure it is the right place to post it but... I have made a project with working firebase functions in nx workspace. It uses node-app as a base. You can find it here and here. I think it covers most of the milestones, apart from scaffolding obviously.

[nkwood]

If anyone is using firebase in a nx managed monorepo, you should be aware of this behavior: firebase/firebase-js-sdk#1696 (comment)

[jongood01]

@Bielik20 Setting "source": "/" in your firebase.json is not ideal at all as 'firebase deploy' will then try to upload all your source code. I've been banging my head against a wall try to get this to work. Ideally 'source' would be something like 'dist/apps/functions'.

[Bielik20]

@jongood01 Yeah I agree but then firebase would complain that there is no npm package there:

Error: No npm package found in functions source directory. Please run 'npm init' inside dist/apps/functions

It is annoying but I think there is little harm in keeping source code up there. It cannot be accessed by anyone from the outside. Deployment is a little longer but also nothing one should worry about.

Or is there a specific reason against it you have in mind?

[jongood01]

@Bielik20 No other reason but on our team we run the deploy as part of a CI process and the mono repo is going to get huge with a lot of code that has nothing to do with the code on Firebase so builds will get slower and slower. I had a hack around to create a minimal package.json in the dist folder but this was also a hack around and not ideal either. Will pick one or the other option for now.
Not really the place for this but I'm really struggling to get Universal rendering working with this as well. I like your idea of having a lib to handle the express server part that gets imported into the cloud function but requiring the main server bundle throws errors.

[spy4x]

Am I right - this issue affects deployment of Nest.js app as well?
Thanks Nx team for all the efforts! Nx is awesome and I really appreciate your work :)

Btw, any movements on this issue?

[johannesnormannjensen]

Hi @Bielik20 and @jongood01

I had also run into the problem of not wanting to upload all my source code. What i found is that you can configure functions to ignore certain directories in firebase.json like this:

...
"functions": {
      "predeploy": [
        "npm run lint functions",
        "npm run build functions --prod"
      ],
      "ignore": [
        "**/apps/web/**",
        "**/apps/web-e2e/**",
        "firebase.json",
        "**/.*",
        "**/node_modules/**"
      ],
      "source": "/"
    },
...

Documentation here: https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/full-config

[george43g]

If nrwl could work natively with firebase cloud functions, that would be ideal.

I'm building an app with Firebase. The amount of hours I've spent fixing configuration errors and trying to get local emulation and testing to work is far higher than time spent doing actual programming. Nothing works, ever. I've already tried Lerna but it seems to be more-so designed for open source projects. Not to mention that its package hoisting breaks everything, meaning I need to npm install each package manually anyway, defeating the purpose.

I was hoping that nrwl would finally help in this regard. A setup that would allow me to start actually programming again rather than adjusting config files all day.