How to Export Firestore Data Completely Free

Are you using firebase?
But if you are using Free Plan, exporting firestore data is not free!
With my 2 minutes tutorial, you can save $5 per month.

The plain way to export firestore data

Google Cloud Platform to export your firestore data

Normally, you have to upgrade your plan to use this feature(Export Firestore Data). But this is not what we want.

Currently, I run 14 mobile applications on firebase completely free. And when I think it’s ready to move onto another database, I need to export firestore data.

But why do I have to pay when I want to use another service?

So, this is my solution.

Prerequisite

• Make sure npm is installed on local machine.

Package Installation

# Install npm library
npm install -g node-firestore-import-export

Warning! We don’t need to write any code to export firestore data. So just install node-firestore-import-export globally. For people who want to know more about this library, go to this link.

Get your service account

• Go to Project settings

Firebase console, go to “Project settings”

• Go to Service accounts and Generate new private key

Firebase Console, go to “service accounts” and “Generate new private key”

• Check your downloaded file.

Generated Service Account File

Now you have json file which contains your service account information. You can move this file wherever you want and change its name, too. I personally changed its name to account_info.json.

Export Data!

# Export Data 
firestore-export -a path/to/your_key.json -b path/to/firestore_data.json -p 
# My Command 
firestore-export -a service_account.json -b data.json -p 

-a flag means ‘accountCredentials’ -b flag means backupFile. -p flag, as you guessed, ‘prettyPrint’.

You can try this command.

firestore-export --accountCredentails /path/to/your_account.json --backupFile /path/to/result.json --prettyPrint

Check Result!

Result of Exporting

JSON File

Oh it works fine!

Bonus! Import Data

# Export Data 
firestore-import -a path/to/your_key.json -b path/to/firestore_data.json 

I think I don’t need any further explanation for this :)

Conclusion

• Install node-firestore-import-export
• prepare service_account.json
• Run command!

firestore-export -a path/to/your_key.json -b path/to/firestore_data.json -p

That’s it!

Leave a comment if you have any question!