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Use Firestore SDKs with Nimbus

Nimbus speaks the Firestore wire protocol through REST, gRPC-Web, and a WebSocket Listen channel for live queries. It ships a first-party drop-in firebase package. The package mirrors the modular firebase/app and firebase/firestore API. Your imports, data model, query shapes, and helper names stay unchanged. The nimbus binary provisions the package locally. A file: dependency points firebase at it.

The supported client is the Nimbus-provisioned firebase package, not the registry-published Google package. The two share import paths and API shapes, but the upstream browser SDK transports over WebChannel, which Nimbus does not implement. See the Firestore compatibility matrix for the precise surface.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”

Every Nimbus server serves the Firestore-compatible routes: nimbus dev and nimbus start both have them on by default, and nimbus start --no-firestore switches them off (embedders call ServeOptions::with_firebase_config). The steps below are the supported client contract against a Nimbus endpoint serving the Firestore surface.

1. Wire the dependency

Section titled “1. Wire the dependency”

In your app directory, one command does the wiring:

Terminal window
nimbus dev

nimbus dev detects the firebase dependency in package.json. It scans your sources to confirm that each Firebase import uses the supported surface. The command then rewires the dependency to the drop-in package. If a file imports an uncovered surface, such as firebase/auth, the scan refuses the change. The diagnostic names the file, line, and import. The command leaves your app untouched.

To wire the dependency without a dev session, provision it directly. Use this method with a separate nimbus start server:

Terminal window
# in your existing app directory
nimbus packages provision firebase
npm install

Both methods use the package in the nimbus binary without registry access. Nimbus writes the package to .nimbus/packages/firebase in your app directory. It rewires dependencies.firebase in package.json to file:./.nimbus/packages/firebase. This value replaces an existing registry spec. Each stock firebase/app and firebase/firestore import then resolves to the provisioned package.

2. Initialize and connect

Section titled “2. Initialize and connect”
import { initializeApp } from "firebase/app";
import {
  connectFirestoreEmulator,
  getFirestore,
} from "firebase/firestore";


const app = initializeApp({ projectId: "demo" });
const db = getFirestore(app);
connectFirestoreEmulator(db, "127.0.0.1", 3210);

connectFirestoreEmulator redirects the SDK to a local host as it does with the Firebase emulator. This is host redirection, not Firebase Emulator Suite control-plane parity. Use the port on which your server listens. nimbus dev serves on 3210, and nimbus start defaults to 8080.

Two mapping rules matter here:

Project is tenant. The Firestore projectId maps directly to a Nimbus tenant id. nimbus dev first reads the default project from .firebaserc. Otherwise, it reads a projectId literal in your sources. It then creates the tenant automatically. On a self-hosted server, create the tenant first. See the self-host quickstart for instructions.

Default database only. Nimbus accepts only the (default) Firestore database. It rejects named databases.

3. Write and read

Section titled “3. Write and read”
import {
  addDoc,
  collection,
  getDocs,
  onSnapshot,
} from "firebase/firestore";


const messages = collection(db, "messages");


await addDoc(messages, {
  body: "hello from nimbus",
  createdAt: new Date().toISOString(),
});


const snapshot = await getDocs(messages);
console.log(snapshot.docs.map((doc) => doc.data()));


const unsubscribe = onSnapshot(messages, (live) => {
  console.log("live size", live.size);
});

Transports

Section titled “Transports”

Transport behavior is explicit rather than auto-negotiated:

  • Unary calls (reads, writes, queries) use REST by default.

  • gRPC-Web unary is available by opting in:

    import { initializeFirestore } from "firebase/firestore";
    

    const db = initializeFirestore(app, {
      experimentalUnaryTransport: "grpc-web",
    });

  • onSnapshot listeners always use the binary-protobuf WebSocket Listen channel. They never use WebChannel or long polling.

  • In environments without a global WebSocket, pass an experimentalWebSocketFactory in the Firestore settings so listeners can open the watch connection.

Supported operations at a glance

Section titled “Supported operations at a glance”
  • Bootstrap: initializeApp, getFirestore, initializeFirestore, connectFirestoreEmulator, terminate
  • References: collection, doc, collectionGroup, documentId
  • CRUD: getDoc, setDoc, updateDoc, deleteDoc, addDoc
  • Queries: query, where, orderBy, limit, startAt, startAfter, endAt, endBefore, getDocs
  • Live queries: onSnapshot
  • Atomicity: writeBatch, runTransaction
  • Field transforms: deleteField, serverTimestamp, increment, arrayUnion, arrayRemove
  • Equality helpers: refEqual, queryEqual, snapshotEqual

For status labels, caveats, and the boundaries that are intentionally not covered, see the compatibility matrix.

Where next

Section titled “Where next”