How to get URL from Firebase Storage getDownloadURL

Question

I'm trying to get the "long term persistent download link" to files in our Firebase storage bucket. I've changed the permissions of this to

service firebase.storage {
  match /b/project-xxx.appspot.com/o {
    match /{allPaths=**} {
      allow read, write;
    }
  }
}

And my javacode looks like this:

private String niceLink (String date){
    String link;
    // Points to the root reference
    StorageReference storageRef = FirebaseStorage.getInstance().getReference();
    StorageReference dateRef = storageRef.child("/" + date+ ".csv");
    link = dateRef.getDownloadUrl().toString();
    return link;
}

When I run this I get the uri link that looks something like com.google.android.gms.tasks.zzh@xxx

Question 1. Can I from this get the download link similar to: https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/project-xxxx.appspot.com/o/20-5-2016.csv?alt=media&token=b5d45a7f-3ab7-4f9b-b661-3a2187adxxxx

When trying to get the link above I changed the last row before my return, like this:

private String niceLink (String date){
    String link;
    // Points to the root reference
    StorageReference storageRef = FirebaseStorage.getInstance().getReference();
    StorageReference dateRef = storageRef.child("/" + date+ ".csv");
    link = dateRef.getDownloadUrl().getResult().toString();
    return link;
}

But when doing this i get a 403 error, and the app crashing. The consol tells me this is bc user is not logged in /auth. "Please sign in before asking for token"

Question 2. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

Please refer to the documentation for getting a download URL.

When you call getDownloadUrl(), the call is asynchronous and you must subscribe on a success callback to obtain the results:

// Calls the server to securely obtain an unguessable download Url
private void getUrlAsync (String date){
    // Points to the root reference
    StorageReference storageRef = FirebaseStorage.getInstance().getReference();
    StorageReference dateRef = storageRef.child("/" + date+ ".csv");
    dateRef.getDownloadUrl().addOnSuccessListener(new OnSuccessListener<Uri>()
    {
        @Override
        public void onSuccess(Uri downloadUrl) 
        {                
           //do something with downloadurl
        } 
    });
}

This will return a public unguessable download url. If you just uploaded a file, this public url will be in the success callback of the upload (you do not need to call another async method after you've uploaded).

However, if all you want is a String representation of the reference, you can just call .toString()

// Returns a Uri of the form gs://bucket/path that can be used
// in future calls to getReferenceFromUrl to perform additional
// actions
private String niceRefLink (String date){
    // Points to the root reference
    StorageReference storageRef = FirebaseStorage.getInstance().getReference();
    StorageReference dateRef = storageRef.child("/" + date+ ".csv");
    return dateRef.toString();
}