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Maintenance Scripts

Server-side scripts for keeping the hosted demo tidy. These are not part of the tutorial and are not needed to run the chat app — they exist only to stop the public live demo from growing forever (and running up Firestore costs).

They run with the Firebase Admin SDK on a server or a scheduled job, separate from the browser app, and require admin credentials.

What's here

File What it does
firebaseAdmin.mjs Initializes the Firebase Admin SDK. Reads a service account from the FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT env var, falling back to Google's application default credentials if it isn't set.
cleanup-monthly.mjs The cleanup routine. Deletes old rooms and trims messages (details below).

What cleanup-monthly.mjs does

Run via npm run cleanup:monthly from the project root. Each run:

  • Deletes every room and all of its messages, except the rooms you preserve.
  • Always keeps the general room, but trims it to the 50 most recent messages.
  • Keeps any extra rooms listed in PRESERVE_ROOM_IDS (also trimmed to their latest 50 messages).
  • Deletes documents in batches of PAGE_SIZE (default 400) to stay within Firestore limits.

It prints a summary when it finishes, e.g. Cleanup complete. Deleted rooms: 3. Deleted messages: 128.

Configuration

Everything is configured through environment variables:

Variable Required Default Description
FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT Yes – Firebase service account JSON, as a single-line string. Used to authenticate the Admin SDK.
PRESERVE_ROOM_IDS No – Comma-separated room IDs to keep in addition to general.
PAGE_SIZE No 400 Number of documents deleted per batch.

Get a service account from the Firebase console: Project settings → Service accounts → Generate new private key. Treat this file as a secret — never commit it.

Running it yourself (cloned copies)

You only need this if you host your own copy of the demo and want the same auto-tidying behavior. It's completely optional — nothing in the app itself deletes data, so if you skip these scripts your rooms and messages stay put.

To run a cleanup once, from the project root:

# macOS / Linux — pass the service account JSON inline
FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT="$(cat path/to/serviceAccount.json)" \
PRESERVE_ROOM_IDS="roomIdOne,roomIdTwo" \
npm run cleanup:monthly

⚠️ This permanently deletes Firestore data. Test against a throwaway Firebase project first, and double-check PRESERVE_ROOM_IDS before running against anything you care about.

Running it on a schedule

The hosted demo runs this monthly via a GitHub Actions workflow: .github/workflows/monthly-cleanup.yml. To reuse it in your own fork:

  1. Add your service account JSON as a repository secret named FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions).
  2. Adjust the PRESERVE_ROOM_IDS list and the cron schedule in the workflow to taste.

You can also trigger it manually from the Actions tab (the workflow enables workflow_dispatch).