Firebase Realtime Database - Custom Rules - Admin Write Permissions

Firebase is cool. Firebase realtime database is also cool. Rules...they are way less cool.

I joke, but protecting your Firebase realtime data is of course important and not to be under-estimated. I wanted to setup Firebase realtime database rules so only the database administrator (me) could enter or edit data. This took me a while to figure out as it involves not only setting the correct rules, but editing the metadata of the user.

Right so let's jump straight in, we're going to set the database rules to allow only edits by an administrator:

"rules":{
        "dinosaurs":{
            ".read":"auth != null",
            ".write":"auth.token.admin === true"
        }

You can see we've granted write permissions only if the user is an administrator. That was pretty easy. Sadly actually configuring which user is an admin is much harder.

First goto your Firebase console and click on the Authentication section, you should be on the user's tab. Locate the user you want to make an administrator and copy their User UUID.

To set this user as an administrator you'll need to use the Firebase Admin SDK. This isn't an Android SDK and so I'm afraid we're going to have to break into some NodeJS.

I'm not going to go into setting up NodeJS here, as it's a huge pain in the neck. Once you've got NodeJS setup, install the firebase Admin SDK as such:
https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup?authuser=0

$ npm install firebase-admin --save

Now you'll need to return to your Firebase console and create a service key. In the settings section, goto service accounts and download a private key. You'll need to create one for NodeJS and you'll need to copy it to the NodeJS folder you're about to create. The path from the index.js file needs to be relative, mine is justin the root. As we won't be sharing this project, it should be fine, but you should never publicly host or share your private key.
Now you should be ready to run a NodeJS script which will set this user as an admin.

Create a standard node project and edit the index.js file. Add the following code:

var admin = require('firebase-admin');

var serviceAccount = require('./service_key.json');

admin.initializeApp({
  credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
  databaseURL: '*****'
});


admin.auth().setCustomUserClaims('#######', {admin: true}).then(() => {
// The new custom claims will propagate to the user's ID token the
// next time a new one is issued.
});

Replace the *** with your database url and #### with the UUID you copied earlier and run your nodeJs project.

That's it. Your user should now be an administrator, it can take a while to propagate, so try logging on and off a few times if it doesn't work right away.

What you've done here is set a custom Claim on that user. Basically some meta-data that describes that user as an admin. Your database rules will only allow administrators to edit that data. Here's a bit more info should you wish to take Calims further:
https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/custom-claims?authuser=0

Good luck, and have fun with Firebase.