Firebase hosting static site from cloud storage bucket?

Question

I've built a dynamic site using typescript in cloud functions. I also have cloud functions triggers, which whenever data changes in Firestore, the relevant pages recompile themselves to a static page hosted in a firebase cloud storage bucket.

Bucket look something like this:

gs://[bucketname].appspot.com
/app/index.html
/app/page1.html
/app/page2.html
/uploads/images.webp
...

Currently, the static site is served through an express app within a cloud function named app. The problem here lies within the cloud function states. They aren't always hot, which makes the initial load time very slow.

firebase.json

"hosting": {
  "public": "public",
  "rewrites": [{ "source": "**", "function": "app" }],
}

What I would like to achieve, is to have Firebase hosting point to the files from the bucket instead of having an express app within a cloud function. Something between the lines of:

firebase.json

"hosting": {
  "public": "public",
  "rewrites": [
    { "source": "**/:url", "destination": "[BUCKETURL]/app/:url.html" },
    { "source": "**", "destination": "[BUCKETURL]/app/index.html" }]
}

My URL structure is very simple, it's domain.com/page-name and I also want to keep it that way without .html at the end. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Frank van Puffelen Frank van Puffelen · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-30T21:43:06

Allowing rewrites from Firebase Hosting to Cloud Storage as you're describing sounds cool, but is currently not possible. I'd recommend filing a feature request.

In the meantime your options are to:

Use the Cloud Functions integration into Firebase Hosting as the redirector, as you already seem to do. This indeed may incur occasional cold-start delays.
Use another type of Cloud Function (or other server-side process) to generate the static content when needed and push that into the Cloud Storage bucket. In this case, you'd not be using Firebase Hosting anymore, but always serve the static content directly from the Cloud Storage bucket.

If you're interested in this, check out: Upload single file to firebase hosting via CLI or other without deleting existing ones?

Firebase hosting static site from cloud storage bucket?

2 Answers