CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidfirebasefirebase-authenticationgoogle-signin
Daniel F
Daniel F

Reputation: 14249

Android Firebase Auth: is "google-services.json" still required?

I have an Android app which uses Firebase Auth, and while fixing some issues I had, I noticed that there is no need to add the file google-services.json to the project.

My issue was the following. I perform a sign-in via Google Sign-In, and in the GSO (Google Sign-In Options) I specify

gsob.requestIdToken(".....apps.googleusercontent.com");
gsob.requestEmail();

because I want an idToken which I then can pass to the Firebase SDK in order to sign the user into Firebase (I'm using it this way for historical reasons).

It had stopped working which was the reason why I was meddling around with the google-services.json file, since I had deleted a Client-ID in console.developers.google.com and thought I made a mistake.

While being at removing stuff, I also removed an entry

<meta-data android:name="identitytoolkit.server_client_id"  android:value="....apps.googleusercontent.com" />

and some more identitytoolkit metadata entries from the Manifest.

In the end the only thing that would matter was that the correct client-id is passed to gsob.requestIdToken(".....apps.googleusercontent.com");

I'm not sure if Google had some hiccups with the idTokens between Google Sing-In and Firebase during these last two days, but in the end I think I really didn't change anything to make it work again.

So the last couple of minutes I was reading through the Firebase documentation, and read that there are now two options for adding Firebase to an Android app, one is the one I used before, and then there's a new option to use the Firebase Assistant.

I never used the Firebase Assistant, but am wondering if it has been enabled automatically in my app (I never clicked "Click Connect to Firebase to register your app with an existing or new Firebase project and to automatically add the necessary files and code to your Android project.")

How can I find out if something in Android Studio has been altered to add my Firebase configuration automatically? Where do I know which client-id's it's using?

I'm asking because even the email-based authentication with Firebase (which is not using Google Sign-In explicitly) is working in the app, and there are is no json file or other client-id's in the Manifest or in the code which could be used for this.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2472

Answers (1)

Doug Stevenson
Doug Stevenson

Reputation: 317868

Nothing has changed in the setup instructions. You either need to have the Play services plugin and google-server.json present, or you need to duplicate its work manually. The only ways to manually duplicate its work are to add the specific string resources to your app that it requires, or call initalizeApp with your specific settings. There are currently no alternatives.

Upvotes: 1

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