TypeError: firebase.storage is not a function

Question

Following this example, I keep getting the error:

 TypeError: firebase.storage is not a function

From this line in my code:

var storageRef = firebase.storage().ref();

(And when I simply try to initialize storage from the storage guide, linked from firebase's npm site, I get the same error.)

In my Node.js project, I'm including the following libraries:

• const firebase = require('firebase');
• var admin = require('firebase-admin');
• const fs = require('fs');

Up to this point, I've successfully been able to read from and write to the firebase database, creating a reference to the database with var db = admin.database(), then var ref = db.ref("/")... So I know I've configured Firebase and firebase-database correctly. But I'm stuck on storage, and have tried both admin.storage().ref() and firebase.storage().ref(), and firebase.storage().ref("/") with the same error message.

I've also tried:

var storage = firbase.storage();
var storageRef = storage.ref();

and

const app = firebase.initializeApp(config);
var storage = app.storage();

and with ref()'s void argument () and with "/"... but have the same message, yet to no avail.

I'm using:

• "firebase": "^3.6.4"
• "firebase-admin": "^4.0.4"
• Node.js : v6.9.1

What must I do to successfully create a reference to storage?

Answer 1

I faced the same problem. In my case, I needed to include storage module besides Firebase core.

import firebase from 'firebase';
import 'firebase/storage';  // <----

firebase.initializeApp({
  ...
});
const storageRef = firebase.storage().ref();

(npm firebase v5.0.4)