Firebase list all users

Question

I'm trying to use the firebase admin sdk but when I try to do this: admin.auth() it gives me an error saying Error: The default Firebase app does not exist. Make sure you call initializeApp() before using any of the Firebase services The app is already initialized when I use the normal sdk, how to I initialize the admin-sdk so I can list all users?

Answer 1

The Admin SDK is designed to be used in trusted environments, such as your development machine, a server you control, or Cloud Functions. It is specifically not designed to be used in client-side code, as doing so will gives any user of your app privileged access to your entire Firebase project.

If you want to show a list of users in your app, the two common approaches are:

• Store the necessary information about the users in a cloud database (such as Cloud Firestore, or Realtime Database) and read it from there, using the server-side security rules of the database to ensure users can only access information they're authorized for.
• Wrap the necessary calls from the Admin SDK in a custom server-side API that you create (for example, on a server you control, or in Cloud Functions), using the custom code to ensure users can only access information they're authorized for.

Also see:

• How do I return a list of users if I use the Firebase simple username & password authentication
• Can't retrieve list of all users from firebase authetication
• ReactJS and Firebase Users Admin
• Setup of firebase-admin sdk in javascript file
• Firebase list all users