React-native-firebase: Typescript not working on `firebase.` unless used as `firebase.app().`

[IljaDaderko]

Issue

I was using firebase.app().auth previously until discovering that app() bit is no longer needed. Switching to firebase.auth causes typescript error below (not only for auth, but in general)

[ts] Property 'auth' does not exist on type 'typeof FireBase'.
any

Environment

1. Application Target Platform: iOS, Android

1. Development Operating System: macOS High Sierra

1. Build Tools:

1. React Native version: 0.52

1. RNFirebase Version: 3.2.1

1. Firebase Module:

[Ehesp]

@IljaDaderko does this happen on the other modules as well?

[IljaDaderko]

@Ehesp indeed it does, judging by typescript suggestions a lot is missing, see screenshots for both firebase. and firebase.app(). below (everything seems to be typed correctly for app())

[Ehesp]

@pheromonez do you mind taking a look at this issue?

[pheromonez]

@Ehesp No problem, I'll submit a PR once I've got something ready

[Ehesp]

Awesome thanks very much!

[danielw93]

What works for me is to first instantiate a firebase object (for example in an injection container like TSDI) const firebase = new FireBase().
And then use the modules on that instance like firebase.auth(), firebase.links(), etc.
I always assumed that was intended behavior 😅

[IljaDaderko]

@danielw93 That did the trick for me, but docs show implementation that is more concise with web sdk: https://rnfirebase.io/docs/v3.2.x/installation/javascript in my opinion this is more friendly to web devs coming into react-native-firebase.

[meyer]

firestore also seems to be missing from type defs. I tried the new Firebase approach that @danielw93 suggested but got errors saying that Firebase is not a constructor. I’ve resorted to commonjs imports to skip type checking, which is definitely less than ideal:

import firebase from 'react-native-firebase';
const firebase2 = require('react-native-firebase');

// ...

firebase.app().auth().signInAnonymously().then(user => {
  const docRef = firebase2.default.firestore().collection('users').doc(user.uid);
  // ...
});

@pheromonez let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with fixing type definitions.

I dug around a bit to see if I could find a flow to .d.ts generator, but didn’t have a lot of luck. Seems like this should be an automated thing.

[Ehesp]

@meyer there's currently a PR for Firestore

[pheromonez]

@Ehesp I've submitted a PR to improve the TS definitions. While going through the JS code I noticed that there's a utils package which is undocumented on https://rnfirebase.io/. Is this package intended for internal use only?

@meyer Thanks for the offer to help. This fix was fairly small, so I've been able to complete it, but there are a couple of modules that currently don't have any TS definitions (admob, config, perf) and could certainly use some attention.

[Ehesp]

@pheromonez yeah the utils directory is used for things like internal event emitters, common helpers and the like and isn't designed for public consumption.

[Ehesp]

Closing in favour of https://github.com/invertase/react-native-firebase/pull/788

[eazeye]

This may not be the right place, but I'm wondering what the rationale for returning multiple values was?
For example, calling firestore.data() will return the following:

For Javascript it doesn't seem to matter, but for Typescript I've had to structure my code differently in comparison to if I was just using that standard Firebase.firestore SDK.