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Parse GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS as JSON if it begins with '{'

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#916 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
java
Domain
authentication

Research direction

Start by locating where GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS is read and where service-account credentials are loaded in the Java SDK. Trace the existing file-path flow, then verify that values beginning with '{' are treated as credential JSON while other values remain file paths; done means both input forms work without committing a credentials file.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

needs-triage type: feature request

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I do not want to commit my credentials file to github, and when running my app inside another enviroment such as Heroku, i run into the trouble because even though i can specify ENV variables i must provide a file path for GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, which is inconvenient because im using git to deploy to heroku

Describe the solution you'd like
Parse GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS as JSON if it begins with '{', otherwise assume is a file path.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Adding additional code that reads an env var which contains the credential json, this is inconvenient because i will need to copy and paste this code for all my projects that use firebase admin

        fun createApp(): FirebaseApp {
            val credentials = System.getenv("FIREBASE_CONFIG")
                .byteInputStream()
                .use { stream -> ServiceAccountCredentials.fromStream(stream) }
            val config = FirebaseOptions.builder()
                .setCredentials(credentials)
                .build()
            return FirebaseApp.initializeApp(config)
        }
Dominant language
Java
Stars
620
Forks
305
Avg merge
3h 23m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

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