[📚] Why is it not documented at all that you can access an image using the path without using getDownloadURL()

[markwitt1]

import { Image, type ImageProps } from "expo-image";
import { memo } from "react";
import storage from "@react-native-firebase/storage";
import { useAuth } from "@/hooks/useAuth";

// Initialize Firebase Storage and get bucket URL once
const STORAGE_BUCKET = storage().app.options.storageBucket;
const STORAGE_BASE_URL = `https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/${STORAGE_BUCKET}/o`;

interface FirebaseImageProps extends Omit<ImageProps, "source"> {
	path: string;
}

function FirebaseImage({ path, recyclingKey, ...props }: FirebaseImageProps) {
	const { idToken } = useAuth();

	const downloadUrl = `${STORAGE_BASE_URL}/${encodeURIComponent(path)}?alt=media`;

	return (
		<Image
			source={{
				uri: downloadUrl,
				cacheKey: `firebase-image-${path}`,
				headers: {
					Authorization: `Bearer ${idToken}`,
				},
			}}
			recyclingKey={recyclingKey || `firebase-image-${path}`}
			placeholderContentFit="cover"
			cachePolicy="memory-disk"
			onError={(e) => {
				console.log("Image loading error:", { path, error: e });
			}}
			{...props}
		/>
	);
}

export default memo(FirebaseImage);

I tried this code out and it works, but it feels weird that this approach is documented nowhere. Is there a reason for this? I am not feedling confident to put this into production

[mikehardy]

const STORAGE_BASE_URL = https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/${STORAGE_BUCKET}/o;

Behind the scenes the whole Firebase system is a bunch of REST APIs in the cloud, and the native SDKs just wrap those and then we do our best here in react-native-firebase to expose under the firebase-js-sdk API surface area...but at it's heart it's just a bunch of REST APIs, so things are pretty regular.

But what happens next year when you're on a new project and storage finishes it's (hypothetical!) migration from v0 to v1 ? Or they alter their URL (which I think they did recently) from firebasestorage.googleapis.com to something else for some unimportant google-network-management reason that the SDKs would take care of for you?

I would use the documented functions vs hand-crafting the URL personally, as a maintenance issue

[github-actions]

Hello 👋, to help manage issues we automatically close stale issues.

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had activity for quite some time.Has this issue been fixed, or does it still require attention?

This issue will be closed in 15 days if no further activity occurs.

Thank you for your contributions.