How to use email authentication in Firebase using Node.js

Question

I'm trying to use the Firebase authentication service by email and password for my App. I've noticed there are two SDKs, Client and Admin, both of them have methods to create a new user. I've also noticed that only the client SDK has method to validate the user email and to return the new user's token after creation.

The two SDKs made me confuse regarding the way I should use this service so I have few questions:

Should I create a "signup" route in my server and use the Admin SDK or I should use the client SDK?
If I use the client SDK for signing it should be in the server side or in the client side?
How I can verify the user email using Firebase "Email address verification" template?

If someone can give me some guidelines.

Frank van Puffelen · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-31 15:06:45Z

1

The Firebase Admin SDKs are meant to run in a trusted environment, such as your development machine, a server you control, or Cloud Functions. They run with elevated, administrative privileges, based on a service account that you specify when initializing them. As such, there is no way to sign a user in with an Admin SDK, even though they indeed (as you noted) have the ability to create user accounts.

The client-side Node.js SDK is meant to be used in non-trusted environments, like for example IoT setups. This SDK indeed allows you to sign in as a specific user, and this information is then passed when you call other Firebase APIs from within the Node app.

Which of the two you should use depends on the use-case, which you're unfortunately not describing. Without that, the above is the best guidance we can give: if your code runs in a trusted environment, use the Admin SDK; otherwise use the client-side SDK.

answered Oct 31, 2021 at 15:06

Frank van Puffelen

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Brave Over a year ago

Thank you for the explanation about the use cases. In my system I control the creation of the users, So I'm guessing I can use the Admin SDK to do it (in a protected environment of course)? This way I will also solve the email verification issue. Then the users can sign in using the client SDK?

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