Firebase Emulator Error: Channel credentials must be a ChannelCredentials object

[REQUIRED] Environment info

firebase-tools: 8.2.0 Platform: macOS

[REQUIRED] Test case

index.js

const functions = require('firebase-functions');
const admin = require('firebase-admin');
admin.initializeApp();

const DEBUG = true;

function markUserUpdated(userId) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    admin.firestore().doc(`users/${userId}`).update({ dbUpdated: new Date() })
      .then(() => {
        if (DEBUG) console.log('User successfully marked Updated', userId);
        resolve();
      })
      .catch(e => reject(e));
  });
}

exports.writeContact = functions.firestore
  .document('users/{userId}/contacts/{contactId}')
  .onWrite((doc, context) => {
    const { userId } = context.params;
    return markUserUpdated(userId);
  });

[REQUIRED] Steps to reproduce

Run the emulator (functions & firestore) with this code. Modify a contact in firestore.

[REQUIRED] Expected behavior

The users/${userId} doc should be updated and you should see a User successfully marked Updated in the console.

[REQUIRED] Actual behavior

i  functions: Beginning execution of "writeContact"
⚠  functions: TypeError: Channel credentials must be a ChannelCredentials object
    at new ChannelImplementation (/Users/pitouli/Documents/GIT/my-app/functions/node_modules/google-gax/node_modules/@grpc/grpc-js/build/src/channel.js:65:19)
    at new Client (/Users/pitouli/Documents/GIT/my-app/functions/node_modules/google-gax/node_modules/@grpc/grpc-js/build/src/client.js:57:36)
    at new ServiceClientImpl (/Users/pitouli/Documents/GIT/my-app/functions/node_modules/google-gax/node_modules/@grpc/grpc-js/build/src/make-client.js:49:5)
    at GrpcClient.createStub (/Users/pitouli/Documents/GIT/my-app/functions/node_modules/google-gax/build/src/grpc.js:220:22)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:97:5)
⚠  Your function was killed because it raised an unhandled error.

Additional notes

If I replace the function markUserUpdated by the following one, then the error is not thrown.

function markUserUpdated(userId) {
    return Promise.resolve();
}

Note also that the datas are perfectly loaded from Firestore into the app, so the Firestore Emulator is running normallly.

[yglin]

OK, I’ve solved it myself. Just update firebase-admin to 9.0.0

npm install firebase-admin@latest

[samtstern]

@Pitouli glad you fixed it! This error can happen when you have multiple versions of gRPC libraries in your node_modules. gRPC has a C++ implementation and sometimes passing objects (like Credentials) between versions does not work.

The good news is that almost all of Google’s Node.js libraries have moved to grpc-js which is a pure JS implementation so eventually this kind of error should disappear.