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

For recommended installations using npm/nvm, Node.js version 8.0 or higher is required. For all installation types, Java version 1.8 or higher is required.

To install the Emulator Suite:

Install the Firebase CLI. If you don't already have the Firebase CLI installed, install it now. You will need CLI version 7.8.0 or higher to use the Emulator Sute. You can check which version you have installed using the following command:
```
firebase --version
```
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
```
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
Cloud Functions	5001
Realtime Database	9000
Cloud Firestore	8080
Cloud 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"
    },
    "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'.
`--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.
`--import=import_directory`	Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore emulator. Import data saved using the `emulators:export` command to a running Cloud Firestore 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.
`--import=import_directory`	Optional. Use with the Cloud Firestore emulator. Import data saved using the `emulators:export` command to a running Cloud Firestore emulator instance. Any data currently in emulator memory will be overwitten.

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 emulator. Export data from a running Cloud Firestore 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.

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.