deploy-to-firebase-pretty-urls.md

Deploy to Firebase using Pretty URLs

Firebase is a very simple and secure way to deploy a Polymer Starter Kit site. You can sign up for a free account and deploy your application in less than 5 minutes.

The instructions below are based on the Firebase hosting quick start guide.

1. Sign up for a Firebase account

2. Install the Firebase command line tools

   npm install -g firebase-tools
   

   The -g flag instructs npm to install the package globally so that you can use the firebase command from any directory. You may need to install the package with sudo privileges.

3. cd into your project directory

4. Inititalize the Firebase application

   firebase init
   

   Firebase asks you which app you would like to use for hosting. If you just signed up, you should see one app with a randomly-generated name. You can use that one. Otherwise go to https://www.firebase.com/account to create a new app.

5. Firebase asks you the name of your app's public directory. Enter dist. This works because when you run gulp to build your application, PSK builds everything and places it all in dist. So dist contains everything your application needs to run.

6. Edit firebase.json, change firebase name, and add rewrites section (see example firebase.json).

   {
     "firebase": "polymer-starter-kit",
     "public": "dist",
     "ignore": [
       "firebase.json",
       "**/.*",
       "**/node_modules/**"
     ],
     "rewrites": [ {
       "source": "!{/bower_components,/elements}/**",
       "destination": "/index.html"
     } ]
   }
   

7. Add <base href="/"> to head near top of index.html, above <!-- Place favicon.ico in the `app/` directory -->

8. Remove hashbang: true in routing.html near bottom. The call to page should look like this now:

   page();
   

9. Build

   gulp
   

10. Deploy

    firebase deploy
    

    The URL to your live site is listed in the output.

You can see a demo of Polymer Starter Kit hosted on Firebase using pretty URLs at https://polymer-starter-kit.firebaseapp.com.