The command firebase functions:log gives the log from the firebase console. I was wondering whether it is chargeable on my plan. Since it was huge Pain the a** for me to go to firebase console online every time I needed to check the logs I wrote a small script to automate it,
var shell = require("shelljs");
while (true) {
shell.exec("firebase functions:log");
}
I'm basically calling firebase functions:log in an infinite while loop.
We have a BFF built with AWS Lambda (nodejs) and API Gateway that interfaces with an API that requires user authentication. And the way we've built it is we have a separate module/file for the API services. Something like this:
src
--handlers
--users.js // with function getMe()
--apiServices
--usersApi.js // with function getUser(id)
So what happens is the getMe() function will receive the event with the request headers with the authentication token. But we need to use the auth token in getUser(id). I've thought of two options to do this:
update getUser(id) to accept an authToken param.
store the auth token in the global variable
I'm preferring to do #2 because it requires less changes but I'm worried that this might not be a good idea because there's no way of knowing for sure when a lambda container will be reused (or if will be reused at all): https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/container-reuse-in-lambda
Has someone tried the 2nd approach before? Or should I just go with #1? The thing with #1 is that we have a lot of files under apiServices with a lot of functions so I would like to apply as little change as possible.
You can do it both ways, but be careful and double check switching context between users because lambda persists for a short period of time and can be hit multiple times.
I’m trying to get setup using Firebase Admin on my nodejs app running on my Raspberry Pi.
when I call;
admin.database().ref().child("myPath").push({date: new Date()});
I’m not receiving any errors but no data is showing up when looking in the Firebase console at my database either.
I also tried chaining on;
set({date: new Date()});
and
push().set({date: new Date()});
Both also fail to write with no errors.
I've verified that my rtdb url and the project id in the service account file are correct for my database. And I've tried both requireing the file as in the docs and passing the credential object directly to;
admin.credential.cert()
I only mention that I'm running on Raspberry Pi because the issue I’m seeing sounds very similar to this Stack Overflow post where Firebase Admin won’t write to db. I’m wondering if it’s not coincidental.
Any ideas what I might be missing?
please can you try this code .....push().set({'date': new Date()});. Thanks. I am guessing it's takes a String as key and even the new Date().toStirng() would be good if i am not wrong.
Thanks,
I am developing an Alexa Skill, and I am struggling a bit in understanding if I setup everything in the best way possible to debug while developing.
Right now I am developing locally using Node.js, uploading to the cloud when ready, and testing all the responses to intents using the Service Simulator in the Test section of the developer console.
I find the process a bit slow but working... But still, I have two questions:
1) Is there a way of avoiding the process of uploading to the cloud?
And mostly important 2) How do I test advanced interactions, for examples multi-step ones, in the console? How for example to test triggering the response to an intent, but then asking the user for confirmation (Yes/No)? Right now the only way of doing it is using the actual device.
Any improvement is highly appreciated
Like #Tom suggested - take a look at bespoken.tools for testing skills locally.
Also, the Alexa Command Line Interface was recently released and it has some command line options you might look into.
For example, the 'api invoke-skill' command lets you invoke the skill locally via the command line (or script) so you don't have to use the service simulator. Like this...
$ask api invoke-skill -s $SKILL_ID -f $JSON --endpoint-region $REGION --debug
Here is a quick video I did that introduces the ASK CLI. It doesn't specifically cover testing but it will provide a quick intro.
https://youtu.be/p-zlSdixCZ4
Hope that helps.
EDIT: Had another thought for testing locally. If you're using node and Lambda functions, you can call the index.js file from another local .js file (example: test.js) and pass in the event data and context. Here is an example:
//path to the Lambda index.js file
var lambdaFunction = require('../lambda/custom/index.js');
// json representing the event - just copy from the service simulator
var event = require('./events/GetUpdateByName.json');
var context = {
'succeed': function (data) {
console.log(JSON.stringify(data, null,'\t') );
},
'fail': function (err) {
console.log('context.fail occurred');
console.log(JSON.stringify(err, null,'\t') );
}
};
function callback(error, data) {
if(error) {
console.log('error: ' + error);
} else {
console.log(data);
}
}
// call the lambda function
lambdaFunction.handler (event, context, callback);
Here's how I'm testing multi-step interactions locally.
I'm using a 3rd party, free, tool called BSTAlexa:
http://docs.bespoken.tools/en/latest/api/classes/bstalexa.html
It emulates Amazon's role in accepting requests, feeding them to your skill, and maintaining the state of the interactions.
So I start my test script by configuring BSTAlexa - pointing it to my skill config (eg. intents) and to a local instance of my skill (in my case I'm giving it a local URL).
Then I feed BSTAlexa a sequence of textual requests and verify that I'm getting back the expected responses. And I put all this in a Mocha script.
It works quite well.
Please find answers (Answering in reverse order),
You can test multiple steps using simulator (echosim.io) but each time you have to press and hold Mic button (Or hold on space bar). Say for example first you are asking something to Alexa with echosim and alexa responding to confirm'yes/no' then you have to press and hold mic button again to respond to confirm it.
You can automate the lambda deployment process. Please see the link,
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/automating-deployment.html
It would be good to write complete unit tests so that you can test your logic before uploading Lambda. Also it will help to reduce the number of Lambda deployments
The project I'm working on uses the feathers JS framework server side. Many of the services have hooks (or middleware) that make other calls and attach data before sending back to the client. If I have a new feature that needs to query a database but for a only few specific things I'm thinking I don't want to use the already built out "find" method for this database query as that "find" method has many other unneeded hooks and calls to other databases to get data I do not need for this new query on my feature.
My two solutions so far:
I could use the standard "find" query and just write if statements in all hooks that check for a specific string parameter that can be passed in on client side so these hooks are deactivated on this specific call but that seems tedious especially if I find this need for several other different services that have already been built out.
I initialize a second service below my main service so if my main service is:
app.use('/comments', new JHService(options));
right underneath I write:
app.use('/comments/allParticipants', new JHService(options));
And then attach a whole new set of hooks for that service. Basically it's a whole new service with the only relation to the origin in that the first part of it's name is 'comments' Since I'm new to feathers I'm not sure if that is a performant or optimal solution.
Is there a better solution then those options? or is option 1 or option 2 the most correct way to solve my current issue?
You can always wrap the population hooks into a conditional hook:
const hooks = require('feathers-hooks-common');
app.service('myservice').after({
create: hooks.iff(hook => hook.params.populate !== false, populateEntries)
});
Now population will only run if params.populate is not false.