Firebase plugin for Vue.js

Introduction

Currently these are the supported features:

• [x] Connection to Firestore
• [x] Configure offline persistence, providing useful function to get document from cache
• [x] Authentication feature

Plugin under development, a lot more to come in a close future (?).

Installation

Install the package into your Vue application:

npm i @paulbarre/vue-firebase firebase

Install the plugin into your application:

import Vue from 'vue'
import VueFirebasePlugin from '@paulbarre/vue-firebase'

const options = {
    ...
}

Vue.use(VueFirebasePlugin, options)

Currently the plugin recognizes the following options:

Name|Type|Default|Description :-|:-|:-|:- config|Object|See below|Firebase configuration firestore|Boolean|Object|false|empty|Sets up firestore into your application auth|Boolean|false|Sets up authentication into your application

Firestore will be setup if firestore is true or an object (empty or not).

The config option is used to initialize the Firebase application.

Name|Type|Description :-|:-|:- projectId|String|The ID you set to your firebase project. It is visible into the URL when you are on the Firebase console of your project, or it is visible into the project settings page. apiKey|String|API Key of your project. Access the project settings page on Firebase console to retrieve it.

See the official documentation for further details.

Real world example, into a Vue app created with Vue CLI:

import Vue from 'vue'
import App from './App.vue'

import VueFirebasePlugin from '@paulbarre/vue-firebase'

const projectId = '<put your project id here>'
const apiKey = '<put your api key here>'

Vue.use(VueFirebasePlugin, {
  firestore: true,
  auth: true,
  config: {
    projectId,
    apiKey
  }
})
Vue.config.productionTip = false

new Vue({
  render: function (h) { return h(App) },
}).$mount('#app')

project id

It is what you can see on the URL when you access your project with the Firebase console: https://console.firebase.google.com/u/0/project/<project-id>/overview.

API key

This is a string mixing characters and numbers looking like: AIza62bf.....

Firestore

In order to setup Firestore into your application, it is imperative that you give the plugin config parameters:

• projectId

To configure Firestore, the plugin firestore parameter has to be true or an object. As an object it accepts the following options:

Name|Type|Default|Description :-|:-|:-|:- enablePersistence|Boolean|false|Sets up offline persistence (official documentation)

VueFirebasePlugin provides $firestore attribute to your Vue components:

App.vue

<script>
export default {
  name: 'app',
  async mounted () {
    const ref = this.$firestore.collection('<the collection you want to use>')
    const snapshot = await ref.get()
    snapshot.forEach(doc => {
      console.log(doc.data())
    })
  }
}
</script>

getFromCache

Enabling the offline cache to Firestore will provide a custom method to $firestore in order to get a document from cache or from server if not found into cache.

Using default firebase API, to get a document from cache:

const myCollectionRef = this.$firestore.collection('myCollection')
const snapshot = await myCollectionRef.doc('myDoc').get({ source: 'cache' })

If no data for the document myDoc is found into the cache, an error is thrown.

To provide automatically a fallback to the server, it is possible to do the following:

const myCollectionRef = this.$firestore.collection('myCollection')
const snapshot = await this.$firestore.getFromCache(doc('myDoc'))

If no data is found into the cache, the data from the server will be downloaded. If no data is found on the server, undefined will be returned.

Attention, to be able to use getFromCache, enablePersistence has to be set to true.

For more information on how to use $firestore, check at the official documentation.

Authentication

In order to setup Authentication into your application, it is imperative that you give the plugin config parameters:

• apiKey

VueFirebasePlugin provides $auth attribute to your Vue components to be able to use Firebase authentication methods. Basically it is mapping firebase.auth().

In addition, it provides a global computed property $logged to check if the app is logged or not to Firebase.

Important

The plugin will automatically set the Firebase callback onAuthStateChanged that will check the user current login. So it is not needed to make any call to the API when the app is refreshed, just looking at $logged will tell if the app is logged in or not.

Real world example for signing in and signing out:

<template>
  <div id="app">
    <div><input placeholder="email" type="text" v-model="email"></div>
    <div><input placeholder="password" type="password" v-model="password"></div>
    <div><button @click="handleError(signIn)">Login with email</button></div>
    <p class="error">{{ error }}</p>
    <p>Am i logged: {{ $logged }}</p>
    <div><button @click="handleError(signOut)">Sign out</button></div>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  name: 'app',
  data () {
    return {
      email: '',
      password: '',
      error: ''
    }
  },
  methods: {
    async handleError (fn) {
      try {
        await fn()
        this.error = ''
      } catch (error) {
        this.error = error.message
      }
    },

    async signIn () {
      await this.$auth.signInWithEmailAndPassword(this.email, this.password)
    },

    async signOut () {
      await this.$auth.signOut()
    }
  }
}
</script>

For more information on how to use $auth, check at the official documentation.

Tested so far

• Sign in with email and password

Example

Check out the repository for a full example. Clone the repository and edit [src/firebase.js](https://github.com/paulbarre/vue-firebase/blob/master/src/firebase.js) to add your project configuration.

Install dependencies with npm i and run the sample application with npm run serve.