firebase-tools: Error when serving Firebase functions on localhost in combination with Firebase Auth

When serving a Firebase Functions on localhost, Firebase Auth does not work. When running the same code on “the cloud”, it produces no errors.

We initialize the Firebase Admin SDK as follows: admin.initializeApp(functions.config().firebase);

Version info

3.16.0

Steps to reproduce

Run firebase serve --only functions Create a functions that uses admin.auth().createUser

Expected behavior

It creates a user in the Firebase Authentication module without errors.

Actual behavior

error: { Error: Credential implementation provided to initializeApp() via the "credential" property has insufficient permission to access the requested resource. See https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup for details on how to authenticate this SDK with appropriate permissions.
    at FirebaseAuthError.FirebaseError [as constructor] (/Users/frank/Development/planl/formagic-server/functions/node_modules/firebase-admin/lib/utils/error.js:39:28)
    at FirebaseAuthError.PrefixedFirebaseError [as constructor] (/Users/frank/Development/planl/formagic-server/functions/node_modules/firebase-admin/lib/utils/error.js:85:28)
    at new FirebaseAuthError (/Users/frank/Development/planl/formagic-server/functions/node_modules/firebase-admin/lib/utils/error.js:143:16)
    at Function.FirebaseAuthError.fromServerError (/Users/frank/Development/planl/formagic-server/functions/node_modules/firebase-admin/lib/utils/error.js:173:16)
    at /Users/frank/Development/planl/formagic-server/functions/node_modules/firebase-admin/lib/auth/auth-api-request.js:523:45
    at <anonymous>
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:160:7)
  errorInfo:
   { code: 'auth/insufficient-permission',
     message: 'Credential implementation provided to initializeApp() via the "credential" property has insufficient permission to access the requested resource. See https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup for details on how to authenticate this SDK with appropriate permissions.' },
  codePrefix: 'auth' }

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 6 years ago
Reactions: 9
Comments: 15 (10 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Disable emulator features via CLI. Refs #595 and #1252 — committed to matheo/firebase-tools by matheo 5 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Thanks for filing! This is a known issue that will take some time to address. In the meanwhile, I recommend initializing firebase-admin with a service account key. See https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup#initialize_the_sdk

laurenzlong on Jan 10, 2018

Initializing with service account key as mentioned above still giving me the same error.

cjmling on Apr 14, 2018

manage to get it working differently in cmd and powershell

cmd

set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=src/serviceAccountKey.json firebase functions:shell

firebase > getUsers.post(‘’).json({data:null});

Powershell

$Env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS = “src/serviceAccountKey.json” firebase functions:shell

firebase > getUsers.post(‘’).json({data:null});

Notice that path is relative path to where you run the command.

hurungang on May 2, 2018