Firebase can't find project ID Firebase Admin SDK cloud messaging - node.js

Question

I want to my Node.js server to be able to automatically send firebase cloud messages to devices with specific registration tokens. The docs discuss several ways I can authorize my Node.js server, including relying on the default project authorization if I am deploying with Google Cloud (which I am). However, while I'm testing my Node.js server on my local machine, it seems like I need to set an environment variable with the path of a downloaded configuration .json.
I did this with:
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/Users/johnsorensen/Documents/Ops Docs/notificationsmrp-firebase-adminsdk-h86ml-cd2d8d8f7a.json"
I can verify that this indeed the correct file path, as I had Mac's finder return it to me.
When I run my app, however, I get this error:
errorInfo: {
code: 'app/invalid-credential',
message: 'Failed to determine project ID: Error while making request: getaddrinfo
ENOTFOUND metadata.google.internal. Error code: ENOTFOUND'
},
codePrefix: 'app'
Node.js code:
const admin = require("firebase-admin")
admin.initializeApp({ credential: admin.credential.applicationDefault(),})
const registrationToken = 'ePdAwFHd_EBJufZC6XQU8l:APA91bEYD5pFKIMuPwO7oAlKWqbENUXXG_TsLf67IS1Lyf-ge9szJ5Eqo0W8GTqgyheXSyNrNY6_QbU5V8nq39hj42cgphRG9PClgKOY8Ugc6aOFMTTY9t5pWrV_suzvzEXH2cprm3Nv';
const message = {
data: {
score: '850',
time: '2:45'
},
token: registrationToken
};
admin.messaging().send(message)
.then((response) => {
console.log("Success")
console.log(response)
})
.catch((error) => {
console.log("Error Sending Message", error)
})
After following the docs provided in the comments, it seemed like I was on the right track. But now gcloud is throwing an error about my .json:
(gcloud.auth.application-default.login) Invalid file format. See https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/python/guide/aaa_client_secrets Expected a JSON object with a single property for a "web" or "installed" application
I downloaded the json from the specified source in the docs... what's going wrong now?

Answer 1

I think the docs I was reading was misleading. I can successfully authenticate a node application by simply downloading the private key from firebase, then using the following code:
const admin = require("firebase-admin");
const serviceAccount = require("/filepath/to/private/key");
admin.initializeApp({
credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount)
});