Firebase gives "path not recognized" error for post requests

Question

I am using Firebase to host my nodejs app and am using Cloud Functions.

Using the command firebase serve --only functions,hosting I am deploying my app.

I have a form with action="/putNPK" and works perfectly when run from node.

But when I serve it through firebase , I am getting this error when I submit the form.

{"error":{"code":404,"status":"NOT_FOUND","message":"/putNPK is not a recognized path.","errors":["/putNPK is not a recognized path."]}}

How to fix this?

firebase.json looks like this :-

{
  "database": {
    "rules": "database.rules.json"
  },
  "hosting": {
    "public": "public",
    "rewrites": [
      {
        "source": "**",
        "function": "app"
      }
    ],
    "ignore": [
      "firebase.json",
      "**/.*",
      "**/node_modules/**"
    ],
    "trailingSlash": true
  }
}

This is my folder structure :-

Contents of index.js :-

    const admin = require("firebase-admin") ; 
const express = require("express") ; 
const app = require("express")() ; 
const bodyparser = require("body-parser") ; 
const functions = require("firebase-functions") ;
const request_controller = require("./requests_controller") ; 



app.use(express.static('../public/assets/')) ; 
app.use(express.static('../public/')) ;

request_controller(app) ; 

app.use((req ,res , next)=>{
    res.status(404).redirect('404.html') ; 
})

app.listen(8000) ; 

exports.app = functions.https.onRequest(app) ;

COntents of requests_controller file (module imported in index.js) :-

    const admin = require("firebase-admin") ; 
const bodyparser = require("body-parser") ; 
const app = require("express")() ; 
const urlencodedParser =bodyparser.urlencoded({extended : true}) ;
const posthandler = require("posthandler") ;
const gethandler = require("gethandler") ;


var serviceAccount = require("C:/Users/Natesh/Documents/raita-mitra-2018-firebase-adminsdk (acnt nateshmbhat1).json");


admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
  databaseURL: "https://raita-mitra-2018.firebaseio.com"
});



//Validates POST request body and checks if the request contains all the keys('strings') in the array sent as keys argument
function validatePostBody(req , res , keys ){
    for(i in keys){
        if(!(keys[i] in req.body))
        {
            console.log("invalid post request returning ! ") ; 
            return false ; 
        }
    }
    return true ; 
}



module.exports = function Handle_requests(app)
{
    console.log('Request Handler started ! ') ;

    app.get('/' , (req , res)=>{
        res.sendFile(__dirname + '/index.html') ; 
    })

    app.get('/home' , (req , res)=>{
        res.sendFile(__dirname + '/index.html') ; 
    })


    app.post('/putNPK', urlencodedParser ,(req , res)=>{
        if(!validatePostBody(req , res , ['fertilizer' ,'crop' , 'nitrogen' , 'phone' , 'phosphorus' , 'potassium'])) return ;  

        ref = admin.database().ref('/users/' + req.body.phone) ; 
        ref.set(req.body) ;
        console.log("Added to firebase database") ;
        res.status(200).redirect('/') ;

        admin.messaging().sendToTopic('global' , {
            notification : {
                title : 'Farmer Project' ,
                body : 'notification body'
            } , 
            data : {
                nitrogen : req.body.nitrogen
            }
        })

    } )

}

Answer 1

I found a simple fix for this :-

• "/path" (with a slash before 'path') works in nodejs but not in firebase.

• "path" (without the SLASH) works both in nodejs and firebase.

Instead of action ="/postpath" , it should be action="postpath" . This ensures that the get and post request go to the express router in a relative path manner which firebase forwards to the concerned function .

If the path is not relative , for example if ur running a localserver , then action="/postpath" resolves to localhost:8000/postpath which works fine in nodejs but in firebase it doesn't work since firebase's function has its own URL over the firebase hosting server .

Therefore localhost:8000/postpath won't even get passed to our express app function handler.

But when action="postpath" is used , it resolves this as http://localhost:5001/<project-id>/us-central1/app/postpath and now works perfectly.

---

EDIT 1:-

Also if one or more of your static files are not getting served , (you are getting 404 error) , it might be because you have included your <script src="/path"> with a slash at the beginning of the source .

Remove the / and it works flawlessly.