How to Download Uploaded Files from Google Firebase Hosting?

Google Firebase is one of the best “free hosting” solution to host your static files like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PDF and a considerable list out there. The Google Firebase offers lightning-fast content delivery throughout the globe, and the reason many bloggers, app developers and students are using Firebase to host a variety of files for different purposes.

You can even host your static website with your custom domain name at Google Firebase, which offers free SSL Certificate as well. I’ve already written an article on How to Host a website for free with Google Firebase so. I am not going to mention here the same again.

Google Firebase is very easy to use, but on another hand, it lacks basic features such as pull code or the download code for the synchronisation. In this article, I’ve listed the two ways to download your previously uploaded files on Google Firebase Hosting if in case you have lost your data stored locally on your computer.

Here are the two ways to download the website and the files hosting on the Google Firebase:

1. Downloading Website Using HTTrack

You can download your website using the HTTrack software, which enables users to download any website. HTTrack is available for free to download and is known as the website copier.

To download your website hosted on Firebase using HTTrack :

1. Download HTTrack from httrack.com
2. Install the HTTrack
3. After installing the HTTrack open it and configure the settings
4. Enter your firebase URL and follow the instructions to download the website.

Pros 

• Easy to download the files including the CSS, JavaScript and HTML etc.

Cons 

• It will only download the files that are linked with your home page directly/ or indirectly.
• It cannot download the files which are not linked from your homepage or any other page which is not linked with your homepage
• It will change the hyperlinks of the pages to locally as per your download directory

Now, what if you have hosted a bulk of files and the names or the URL of files are unknown? Well, the next step will guide you in downloading the files whose names or the URL is not known.

2. Downloading Firebase Hosted files Manually

There is a mind storming solution which I call it downloading the file manually. In this method first, we will find the names of the files hosted on your Firebase using the Firebase CLI.

To download the files manually from Firebase Hosting :

• Download and install the Node.js
• Download the firebase tools using the following command in Node.js CLI :

npm install -g firebase-tools

• Login in to your Firebase account using the following command :

firebase login

• Initialise your project using the firebase init command
• Now to find the names of the files that you have uploaded on Google Firebase run the following command :

firebase deploy --debug

Firebase deploy –debug command will generate debugging code which will include the list of the files that you have uploaded with other relevant and useful information.

Now, to download the files, you can follow these steps :

1. Prepare a list of the names of the files from the debugging console screen.
2. Include the full URL of your firebase project URL or your domain name if in case you have used the custom domain name with your Firebase hosting account in front of every file names that you have listed.
3. Now download the files manually using your web browser or wget command if in case you are using Linux/UNIX operating system