firebase-ruby

A pure Ruby library for Firebase Realtime Database REST API which has only one external dependency: jwt. firebase-ruby uses Ruby's built-in Net::HTTP for all HTTP access.

Firebase SDK makes it easy to work with Realtime Database. However, on the server-side you you'll likely have to work with the REST API directly, and on top of this you will need to deal with OAuth, which can get complicated in a server environment.

To use firebase-ruby, you'll need a Service Account and its Private Key. This needs to be in JSON format. Now, you have two ways to use it.

See Access Token for more details on that.

This gem has a built-in command fbrb as an example use and for quick testing.

fbrb -k privatekey.json /

This will download the entire database in JSON format. By using the private key JSON file provided via Firebase console when creating a service account, necessary information such as project ID, URL, credentials are automatically applied.

require 'firebase-ruby'

# If you want to enable debug logging
Firebase.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
Firebase.logger.level = Logger::DEBUG

db = Firebase::Database.new()
db.set_auth_with_key(path: path_to_key_file)
# or alternatively supply the JSON as string
db.set_auth_with_key(json: json_string)

db.get('/users/jack/name')
#{
#  "first": "Jack",
#  "last": "Sparrow"
#}

db.put('/users/jack/name', {first: "Jack", last: "Sparrow"})
#{
#  "first": "Jack",
#  "last": "Sparrow"
#}

db.post('/message_list', {user_id: "jack", text: "Ahoy!"})
#{
#  "name": "-INOQPH-aV_psbk3ZXEX"
#}

db.patch('/users/jack/name', {last: "Jones"})
#{
#  "last": "Jones"
#}

db.delete('/users/jack/name/last')

Trying to use it in a Lambda function but lost figuring out how to install gems? See firebase-lambda-layer.

Using the given credentials, firebase-ruby will automatically retrieve the access token from Google's server. The token is valid for 1 hour but a new token will be fetched right before it expires.

firebase-ruby keeps the Google OAuth 2.0 process a black box. But for more details, see the document on Google Developers which the process is based on: Using OAuth 2.0 for Server to Server Applications.