/firebase-firestore

Provisioning Cloud Firestore

Manual Initialization

Initialize the following firebase configuration files manually. Do not use npx -y firebase-tools@latest init, as it expects interactive inputs.

1. Create firebase.json: This file configures the Firebase CLI.
2. Create firestore.rules: This file contains your security rules.
3. Create firestore.indexes.json: This file contains your index definitions.

1. Create firebase.json

Create a file named firebase.json in your project root with the following content. If this file already exists, instead append to the existing JSON:

{
  "firestore": {
    "rules": "firestore.rules",
    "indexes": "firestore.indexes.json"
  }
}

This will use the default database with the Standard edition. To use a different database, specify the database ID and location:

1. Run npx -y firebase-tools@latest firestore:locations to get the list of locations.
2. Ask the user which location to use, suggesting colocation if other parts of the app already have a region selected.

You can check the list of available databases using npx -y firebase-tools@latest firestore:databases:list.

If the database does not exist, it will be created when you deploy with the specified configuration:

{
  "firestore": {
    "rules": "firestore.rules",
    "indexes": "firestore.indexes.json",
    "database": "my-database-id",
    "location": "<selected-location>"
  }
}

2. Create firestore.rules

Create a file named firestore.rules. A good starting point (locking down the database) is:

rules_version = '2';
service cloud.firestore {
  match /databases/{database}/documents {
    match /{document=**} {
      allow read, write: if false;
    }
  }
}

See the firestore-rules-creation skill for how to write actual rules.

3. Create firestore.indexes.json

Create a file named firestore.indexes.json with an empty configuration to start:

{
  "indexes": [],
  "fieldOverrides": []
}

See indexes.md for how to configure indexes.

Deploy database, rules and indexes

CRITICAL: You MUST deploy the firestore configuration for the database to be provisioned in the cloud and for your rules/indexes to take effect. If you don't run this, your database will not exist.

# To deploy all rules and indexes
npx -y firebase-tools@latest deploy --only firestore

# To deploy just rules
npx -y firebase-tools@latest deploy --only firestore:rules

# To deploy just indexes
npx -y firebase-tools@latest deploy --only firestore:indexes

Local Emulation

To run Firestore locally for development and testing:

npx -y firebase-tools@latest emulators:start --only firestore

This starts the Firestore emulator, typically on port 8080. You can interact with it using the Emulator UI (usually at http://localhost:4000/firestore).