Deploying Firebase Rules is super easy

The deployment of my firebase project has been automated since day one.

With one notable exception - the database rules.

A recent feature required considerable changes to the rules and I wanted to have them under source control.

Partly to have a record of all changes and partly as it's easy for clumsy fingers to update / delete rules via the console.

Turns out it's super easy - as most things Firebase are! 😄

Simply define your rules in a .json file, then add a rules property to the firebase.json file that points to it.

{ "database": { "rules": "firebase.database.rules.json" }, "hosting" : { ... } } 

Then wherever you run simply call the Firebase CLI like this:

firebase deploy --only database

Or if like me you want to deploy and app and database:

firebase deploy --only hosting,database

Note the lack of space after the comma, that caught me out first try!