Download Files on Web

Cloud Storage allows developers to quickly and easily download files from a Google Cloud Storage bucket provided and managed by Firebase.

Note: By default, Cloud Storage buckets require Firebase Authentication to download files. You can change your Firebase Security Rules for Cloud Storage to allow unauthenticated access. Since the default Google App Engine app and Firebase share this bucket, configuring public access may make newly uploaded App Engine files publicly accessible as well. Be sure to restrict access to your Storage bucket again when you set up authentication.

Create a Reference

To download a file, first create a Cloud Storage reference to the file you want to download.

You can create a reference by appending child paths to the storage root, or you can create a reference from an existing gs:// or https:// URL referencing an object in Cloud Storage.

// Create a reference with an initial file path and name
var storage = firebase.storage();
var pathReference = storage.ref('images/stars.jpg');

// Create a reference from a Google Cloud Storage URI
var gsReference = storage.refFromURL('gs://bucket/images/stars.jpg')

// Create a reference from an HTTPS URL
// Note that in the URL, characters are URL escaped!
var httpsReference = storage.refFromURL('https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/b/bucket/o/images%20stars.jpg');

Download Data via URL

You can get the download URL for a file by calling the getDownloadURL() method on a storage reference.

storageRef.child('images/stars.jpg').getDownloadURL().then(function(url) {
  // `url` is the download URL for 'images/stars.jpg'

  // This can be downloaded directly:
  var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhr.responseType = 'blob';
  xhr.onload = function(event) {
    var blob = xhr.response;
  };
  xhr.open('GET', url);
  xhr.send();

  // Or inserted into an <img> element:
  var img = document.getElementById('myimg');
  img.src = url;
}).catch(function(error) {
  // Handle any errors
});

CORS Configuration

To download data directly in the browser, you must configure your Cloud Storage bucket for cross-origin access (CORS). This can be done with the gsutil command line tool, which you can install from here.

If you don't want any domain-based restrictions (the most common scenario), copy this JSON to a file named cors.json:

[
  {
    "origin": ["*"],
    "method": ["GET"],
    "maxAgeSeconds": 3600
  }
]

Run gsutil cors set cors.json gs://<your-cloud-storage-bucket> to deploy these restrictions.

See the Cloud Storage Docs for more information.

Handle Errors

There are a number of reasons why errors may occur on download, including the file not existing, or the user not having permission to access the desired file. More information on errors can be found in the Handle Errors section of the docs.

Full Example

A full example of a download with error handling is shown below:

// Create a reference to the file we want to download
var starsRef = storageRef.child('images/stars.jpg');

// Get the download URL
starsRef.getDownloadURL().then(function(url) {
  // Insert url into an <img> tag to "download"
}).catch(function(error) {

  // A full list of error codes is available at
  // https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/web/handle-errors
  switch (error.code) {
    case 'storage/object-not-found':
      // File doesn't exist
      break;

    case 'storage/unauthorized':
      // User doesn't have permission to access the object
      break;

    case 'storage/canceled':
      // User canceled the upload
      break;

    ...

    case 'storage/unknown':
      // Unknown error occurred, inspect the server response
      break;
  }
});

You can also get or update metadata for files that are stored in Cloud Storage.