Is it possible to use firebase and express together?

Question

I am new to express and i wanted to build a rest api from express.js that uses firebase as database. is it possible for them to work together? i tried doing this...

 const firebase = require("firebase") const express = require("express"); const app = express(); const cors = require( 'cors'); var firebaseConfig = { apiKey: "xxxxxxx", authDomain: "xxxxxx", databaseURL: "xxxxxx", projectId: "xxxxxx", storageBucket: "xxxxxx", messagingSenderId: "xxxxxx", appId: "xxxxxxx" }; // Initialize Firebase firebase.initializeApp(firebaseConfig); app.use(cors()) let data; firebase.database().ref("public").on("value", snapshot =>{ data = snapshot.val(); }) app.get("/api", (req, res)=>{ res.send(data) }) app.listen(3500, ()=>console.log("listening at port 3500..."))

But it didnt work, the server keeps on disconnecting, the server does not respond and i have to start it again. And when i go to "port: 3500" the server stops responding I heard about cloud function but we need pay for it. Is there any other way?

Answer 1

The issue is that you're only reading the data when the api is requested, and you aren't sending a response. Here's how I fixed it:

firebase.database().ref("public").on("value", snapshot =>{
data = snapshot.val();
})

app.get("/api", (req, res)=>{
    res.send(data)

})

Replace your app.get with this code, and it should work.