Firebase integration problem

[ykolomiets]

Hi! I have a mysterious issue. I want to use firebase-admin package in my project.

• What I have done:

1. npm install firebase-admin --safe
2. In sandbox.js added 'firebase-admin'
3. Initialization of firebase works fine and sending messages one by one works too.

• Problem:

On this code:

let admin  = api.firebaseAdmin;
let ids = ['id1', 'id2'];
try 
   {
     admin.messaging()
       .sendToDevice(ids, message)
       .then((response) => {
         console.log(response);
       })
       .catch((err) => {
         console.log("Catched error: " + err);
       });
   } catch (err) {
     console.log(err);
   };

receive 'Error: Registration token(s) provided to sendToDevice() must be a non-empty string or a non-empty array.'

And this happens because in function sendToDevice presents check (ids instanceof Array) and it returns false. This problem is mysterious to me because if I check (ids instanceof Array) right before passing ids to sendToDevice it returns TRUE, but in function sendToDevice same check returns FALSE.

• P.S.
  If I don't use impress and just create an empty folder, (npm install firebase-admin --safe), create file test.js, insert same code, node test.js - it works fine, without such error.

[belochub]

Hello!
This happens due to the fact that impress runs the user's code sandboxed, meaning that in your case it runs your code and the code from firebase-admin package in different contexts and, therefore, global Array objects differ from each other, which means that instanceof operator returning false value is a correct result in this situation. This could have been easily avoided if firebase-admin developers used the relatively new Array.isArray method when possible (since it works in such situations) instead of using instanceof operator. You can also check out this discussion for a more detailed explanation.

There is nothing we can do about it, since sandboxing the code is one of the core ideas of impress, and I think you should report this issue to firebase-admin package developers instead, or you may even make a contribution to their package since this is quite easy to fix.

[tshemsedinov]

By the way, you don't need firebase at all :)

[ykolomiets]

why not? we use it for push notifications. Single interface for multiple platforms(iOS / Android). What are the alternatives? @tshemsedinov

[tshemsedinov]

@ykolomiets you can use JSTP, Websocket or SSE to push event from server to client. It is implemented in impress and available without any extensions.

[ykolomiets]

How can I push notifications to the app which is closed and connection with impress server isn't established? For this purposes Apple provides APN and Google provides its own service. Firebase is just a wrapper around these two services, so it's easy to use

[tshemsedinov]

Use two different push services for those platforms, it's just twice harder. Using firebase for this more then twice harder ) @ykolomiets