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Install, configure and integrate Local Emulator Suite

The Firebase Local Emulator Suite can be installed and configured for different prototype and test environments, anything from one-off prototyping sessions to production-scale continuous integration workflows.

Install the Local Emulator Suite

Before installing the Emulator Suite you will need:

  • Node.js version 8.0 or higher.
  • Java version 1.8 or higher.

To install the Emulator Suite:

  1. Install the Firebase CLI. If you don't already have the Firebase CLI installed, install it now. You will need CLI version 8.14.0 or higher to use the Emulator Suite. You can check which version you have installed using the following command: 
    firebase --version
  2. If you haven't already done so, initialize the current working directory as a Firebase project, following the onscreen prompts to specify which products to use: 
    firebase init
  3. Set up the Emulator Suite. This command starts a configuration wizard that lets you select emulators of interest, download the corresponding emulator binary files, and set emulator ports if the defaults are not appropriate. 
    firebase init emulators

Once an emulator is installed, no update checks are performed and no additional automatic downloads will occur until you update your Firebase CLI version.

Configure Emulator Suite

You can optionally configure the emulators' network ports and path to Security Rules definitions in the firebase.json file

If you don't configure these settings, the emulators will listen on their default ports, and the Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database emulators will run with open data security.

Change emulator ports by running firebase init emulators or by editing firebase.json manually. Change the path to Security Rules definitions by editing firebase.json manually.

Command Description
init emulators Start an emulator initialization wizard. Identify emulators to be installed and optionally specify emulator port settings. init emulators is non-destructive; accepting defaults will preserve the current emulator configuration.

Port configuration

Each emulator binds to a different port on your machine with a preferred default value.

Emulator Default Port
Authentication 9099
Emulator Suite UI 4000
Cloud Functions 5001
Realtime Database 9000
Cloud Firestore 8080
Pub/Sub 8085
Firebase Hosting 5000

Security Rules configuration

The emulators will take Security Rules configuration from the database and firestore configuration keys in firebase.json.

{
  // Existing firebase configuration ...
  "database": {
    "rules": "database.rules.json"
  },
  "firestore" {
    "rules": "firestore.rules"
  },

  // ...

  // Optional emulator configuration. Default
  // values are used if absent.
  "emulators": {
    "firestore": {
      "port": "8080"
    },
    "ui": {
      "enabled": true,      // Default is `true`
      "port": 4000          // If unspecified, see CLI log for selected port
    },
    "auth": {
      "port": "9099"
    },
    "functions": {
      "port": "5001"
    },
    "database": {
      "port": "9000"
    },
    "pubsub": {
      "port": "8085"
    }
  }
}

Start up emulators

You can start emulators to run until manually terminated, or to run for the duration of a designated test script then automatically shut down.

Command Description
emulators:start Start emulators for the Firebase products configured in firebase.json. Emulator processes will continue running until explicitly stopped. Calling emulators:start will download the emulators to ~/.cache/firebase/emulators/ if they are not already installed.
Flag Decription
--only Optional. Limit which emulators start. Supply a comma-separated list of emulator names, specifying one or more of 'firestore', 'database', 'functions', 'hosting', or 'pubsub'. Note that the Emulator Suite UI server is not launched when you use the --only option.
--inspect-functions debug_port Optional. Use with the Cloud Functions emulator to enable breakpoint debugging of functions at the specified port (or the default port 9229 if argument omitted). Note that when this flag is supplied, the Cloud Functions emulator switches to a special serialized execution mode in which functions are executed in a single process, in sequential (FIFO) order; this simplifies function debugging, though the behavior differs from multi-process, parallel execution of functions in the cloud.
--export-on-exit= Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator. Instruct the emulator(s) to export data to a directory when shutdown occurs, as described for the emulators:export command. The export directory can be specified with this flag: firebase emulators:start --export-on-exit=./saved-data. If --import is used, the export path defaults to the same; for example: firebase emulators:start --import=./data-path --export-on-exit. Lastly, if desired, pass different directory paths to the --import and --export-on-exit flags.
--import=import_directory Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator. Import data saved using the --export-on-exit startup option or the emulators:export command to a running Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator instance. Any data currently in emulator memory will be overwitten.
emulators:exec scriptpath Run the script at scriptpath after starting emulators for the Firebase products configured in firebase.json. Emulator processes will automatically stop when the script has finished running.
Flag Decription
--only Optional. Limit which emulators start. Supply a comma-separated list of emulator names, specifying one or more of 'firestore', 'database', 'functions', 'hosting', or 'pubsub'.
--inspect-functions debug_port Optional. Use with the Cloud Functions emulator to enable breakpoint debugging of functions at the specified port (or the default port 9229 if argument omitted). Note that when this flag is supplied, the Cloud Functions emulator switches to a special serialized execution mode in which functions are executed in a single process, in sequential (FIFO) order; this simplifies function debugging, though the behavior differs from multi-process, parallel execution of functions in the cloud.
--export-on-exit= Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator. Instruct the emulator(s) to export data to a directory when shutdown occurs, as described for the emulators:export command. The export directory can be specified with this flag: firebase emulators:start --export-on-exit=./saved-data. If --import is used, the export path defaults to the same; for example: firebase emulators:start --import=./data-path --export-on-exit. Lastly, if desired, pass different directory paths to the --import and --export-on-exit flags.
--import=import_directory Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator. Import data saved using the --export-on-exit startup option or the emulators:export command to a running Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator instance. Any data currently in emulator memory will be overwitten.
--ui Optional. Run the Emulator UI during execution.

The firebase emulators:exec method is generally more appropriate for continuous integration workflows.

Export and import emulator data

You can export data from the Cloud Firestore emulator to use as a shareable, common baseline data set. These data sets can be imported using the --import flag, as described above.

emulators:export export_directory

Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator. Export data from a running Cloud Firestore or Realtime Database emulator instance. The specified export_directory will be created if it does not already exist. If the specified directory exists, you will be prompted to confirm that the previous export data should be overwritten. You can skip this prompt using the --force flag. The export directory contains a data manifest file, firebase-export-metadata.json.

You can instruct the emulators to export data automatically when they shutdown using the --export-on-exit flags described above.

Integrate with your CI system

Running containerized Emulator Suite images

Installation and configuration of the Emulator Suite with containers in a typical CI setup is straightforward.

There are a few issues to note:

  • JAR files are installed and cached at ~/.cache/firebase/emulators/.

    • You may want to add this path to your CI cache configuration to avoid repeated downloads.

  • If you do not have a firebase.json file in your repository, you must add a command line argument to the emulators:start or emulators:exec command to specify which emulators should be started. For example,
    --only functions,firestore.

Generate an auth token (Hosting emulator only)

If your continuous integration workflows rely on Firebase Hosting, then you will need to login using a token in order to run firebase emulators:exec. The other emulators do not require login.

To generate a token, run firebase login:ci on your local environment; this should not be performed from a CI system. Follow instructions to authenticate. You should only need to perform this step once per project, since the token will be valid across builds. The token should be treated like a password; make sure it is kept secret.

If your CI environment allows you to specify environment variables that can be used in the build scripts, simply create an environment variable called FIREBASE_TOKEN, with the value being the access token string. The Firebase CLI will automatically pick up the FIREBASE_TOKEN environment variable and the emulators will start properly.

As a last resort, you can simply include the token in your build script, but make sure that untrusted parties do not have access. For this hard-coded approach, you can add --token "YOUR_TOKEN_STRING_HERE" to the firebase emulators:exec command.

Use the Emulator Hub REST API

List running emulators

To list the currently running emulators, send a GET request to the /emulators endpoint of the Emulator Hub.

curl localhost:4400/emulators

The result will be a JSON object listing all running emulators and their host/port configuration, for example:

{
  "hub":{
    "name": "hub",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 4400
  },
  "functions": {
    "name": "functions",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 5001
  }
  "firestore": {
    "name": "firestore",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 8080
  }
}

Enable / Disable Background Function Triggers

In some situations you will need to temporarily disable local function triggers. For example you may want to delete all of the data in the Cloud Firestore emulator without triggering any onDelete functions that are running in the Cloud Functions emulator.

To temporarily disable local function triggers, send a PUT request to the /functions/disableBackgroundTriggers endpoint of the Emulator Hub.

curl -X PUT localhost:4400/functions/disableBackgroundTriggers

The result will be a JSON object detailing the current state.

{
  "enabled": false
}

To enable local function triggers after they have been disabled, send a PUT request to the /functions/enableBackgroundTriggers endpoint of the Emulator Hub.

curl -X PUT localhost:4400/functions/enableBackgroundTriggers

The result will be a JSON object detailing the current state.

{
  "enabled": true
}

Emulator SDK integrations

The tables in this section indicate which emulators are supported by client and Admin SDKs. Future means emulator support is planned but not yet available.

Client SDK availability

Android iOS Web Firebase UI
Android 		Firebase UI
iOS 		Firebase UI
Web
Realtime Database 19.4.0 7.2.0 8.0.0 6.4.0 Future N/A
Cloud Firestore 21.6.0 7.2.0 8.0.0 6.4.0 Future N/A
Authentication 20.0.0 7.0.0 8.0.0 7.0.0 Future Future
Cloud Functions 19.1.0 7.2.0 8.0.0 N/A N/A N/A
Hosting N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Admin SDK availability

Node Java Python Go
Realtime Database 8.6.0 6.10.0 2.18.0 Future
Cloud Firestore 8.0.0 6.10.0 3.0.0 1.0.0
Authentication 9.3.0 Future Future Future
Cloud Functions N/A N/A N/A N/A
Hosting N/A N/A N/A N/A