Cloud Functions for Firebase Async Await style

Question

Looks like Cloud Functions does not support Async-Await notation. Is there a way I could use Babel until they do or is it recommended to use promises?

My current function that sits on Node is like so:

exports.getToken = async (req, res) => {
  //1. Generate token from Braintree
  const result = await gateway.clientToken.generate();

  //2. Return the client token
  res.json(result.clientToken);
};

Doug Stevenson · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-13T20:31:57.567

46

Cloud Functions runs the LTS version of node.js, which according to the documentation is 6.14.0 at this moment in time. node 6.x supports EcmaScript 6, which does not include async/await.

However, you can write your code in TypeScript and have that transpiled down to ES5/ES6, which will effectively convert the use of async/await into promises. A web search suggests that perhaps this plugin can be used to help Babel with similar transpiling.

It's worth noting that the Firebase CLI now allow you to initialize a new Cloud Functions project with native TypeScript support, which is what the Firebase team is currently recommending to developers.

If you don't want to use TypeScript, you can now also choose node 8 (which is currently in beta, and does support async/await for plain JavaScript) as a deployment target. You can follow the documentation to edit your package.json to indicates that your functions should be deployed to node 8.

edited Sep 13 '18 at 20:31

answered Jun 08 '17 at 20:22

Doug Stevenson

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It's also easy to use babel to compile your ES8 code to ES6 code that works with Cloud Functions, see example here: https://codeburst.io/es6-in-cloud-functions-for-firebase-2-415d15205468 – chez.mosey May 03 '18 at 09:32
thank you, solved my issue but, the whole branch is deleted if all children are old values >> can I keep branches empty of not? – Moustafa EL-Saghier Sep 13 '18 at 21:07
3

Plus 1 for setting "engine": {"node":8}. Such a quick fix! Wish I could +100. – Rap Nov 08 '18 at 14:51

score 39 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '18 at 12:18

39

Now you can use Node.js version 8 by adding this in your functions/package.json:

"engines": {
   "node": "8"
}

Example: https://github.com/firebase/functions-samples/blob/Node-8/authenticated-json-api/functions/package.json

answered Oct 05 '18 at 12:18

l2aelba

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1

Weird. I had not to do that – l2aelba Oct 22 '18 at 20:36
2

you have to add --runtime nodejs8 to the gcloud if you gcloud to deploy, you don't have to add this if you use firebase tools to deploy functions – Stanislau Buzunko Nov 09 '18 at 14:03
this worked great and perhaps needs to be accepted as the response now since functions uses node 8 during run time as well – TheeBen Dec 24 '18 at 18:28
Updating the version of running node to 8 solve problem as well. – Kosmonaft Feb 22 '19 at 04:14
Thank you, saved me some time. – jremi Mar 08 '19 at 18:10

rma · Answer 3 · 2018-06-22T19:18:59.780

Instead of transpile TypeScript, I have transpiled my javascript after follow this very nice post and take a look at this repository

Basically you can do:

npm install -g @babel/cli @babel/core @babel/preset-env

UPDATE:
I'm having troubles with version "7.0.0-beta.51" of babel. "7.0.0-beta.44" still ok.
Switch to stable version 6

npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-env

Create the file .babelrc inside your project folder

{
  "presets": [
    ["@babel/env", {
      "targets": {
        "node": "6.11.5"
      }
    }]
  ]
}

Move your "functions" folder to "firebaseFunctions" folder and then run

babel firebaseFunctions --out-dir functions --copy-files --ignore firebaseFunctions/node_modules

Or run this command for each files you want to transpile

babel originalfile.js --out-file transpiledfile.js

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 26 '19 at 18:55

The above solutions didn't work for me alone. I had to update to the latest firebase tools:

npm update -g firebase-tools

and then update my package.json with adding:

 "engines": {"node": "8"}

and everything worked fine with async/await.

Credits to this blog https://howtofirebase.com/cloud-functions-migrating-to-node-8-9640731a8acc

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 24 '19 at 00:03

In your functions/.eslintrc.json file set as 'ecmaVersion': 2017 this will remove eslint syntax error

"parserOptions": {
    "ecmaVersion": 2017
 },

In your functions/package.json file set node version to 8 by adding below

"engines": {
     "node": "8"
},

this will update the cloud node version to 8 default node version is 6

Christhopher Lion · Answer 6 · 2019-10-30T11:57:29.453

0

as @adam said, solved my problem to reinstall/upgrade the global firebase package

the difference is in my case was using NVM (node version manager). Somehow, my default node(v13.x) had the firebase-tools but i didnt installed globally at project node (v10/8) so first:

nvm use 10

then:

npm i -g firebase-tools

reinstalling at correct node version got my async functions working properly.

edited Oct 30 '19 at 11:57

answered Oct 30 '19 at 11:48

Christhopher Lion

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Cloud Functions for Firebase Async Await style

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