Cannot connect to Auth Emulator more than once

[tzappia]

[REQUIRED] Environment info

firebase-tools: 13.29.1

Platform: macOS

[REQUIRED] Test case

Initialize the Auth Emulator as part of a server side rendering flow using FirebaseServerApp. A sample app is provided with the latest release of AngularFire.

[REQUIRED] Steps to reproduce

In an environment using emulators, initialize the app, authenticate, and then reload the page.

[REQUIRED] Expected behavior

No errors should be observed when reloading the page.

[REQUIRED] Actual behavior

The app crashes with the error: auth/emulator-config-failed

Additional notes

I see that in the AngularFire sample app, they have included this check to ensure the emulator doesn't get initialized twice.

if ((auth as any)._canInitEmulator && environment.emulatorPorts?.auth) {
  connectAuthEmulator(auth, `http://localhost:${environment.emulatorPorts.auth}`, { disableWarnings: true });
}

This is a workaround that shouldn't have to rely on internal properties. Other emulators (Storage, Firestore, etc.) are able to be connected to multiple times successfully without error.

[aalej]

Thanks for reaching out, @tzappia. It seems like the error is thrown here. From what I can gather, when the JavaScript SDK has made a request to the emulator(initialized a connection), trying to call connectAuthEmulator again would raise the auth/emulator-config-failed error.

I’m able to reproduce the error from the sample by commenting out the condition that checks if the connection to the emulator has been initialized:

     // if ((auth as any)._canInitEmulator && environment.emulatorPorts?.auth) {
     connectAuthEmulator(
       auth,
       `http://localhost:${environment.emulatorPorts.auth}`,
       { disableWarnings: true }
     );
     // }

Since the error is coming from the client SDK, I’d recommend filing an issue to the Firebase JavaScript SDK repository so that they can take a look.

[tzappia]

Thanks for investigating @aalej . It seems there was an existing bug open for this issue since 2022. I think it may be more of a problem now that SSR is gaining traction. I think it's a bad sign that the AngularFire put in a hack for it and that they haven't coordinated with the Firebase team to figure out a resolution. Are you able to bump the old bug report in the JS SDK repo with someone internally so it doesn't stay lost? Will it get more attention if I just open a brand new bug report?

[aalej]

Thanks for sharing that issue @tzappia. I agree with you here, since SSR application are becoming more popular, I do see this causing some issues when trying to use the emulators.

Reading through the bug, I think the proposed solution was exposing a emulatorInitialized() method that can be used to check if it is still possible to call connectAuthEmulator. I wonder if it would be possible to instead add a condition similar to if ((auth as any)._canInitEmulator && environment.emulatorPorts?.auth) into the connectAuthEmulator method.

Let me try to ping some folks to see what we can do here.