Running the App | Next.js Firebase SaaS Kit

Learn how to run the app locally for development and testing.

When we run the stack of a Makerkit application, we will need to run a few commands before:

Next.js: First, we need to run the Next.js development server
Firebase: We need to run the Firebase Emulators. The emulators allow us to run a fully-local Firebase environment.
Stripe CLI (optional): If you plan on interacting with Stripe, you are also required to run the Stripe CLI, which allows us to test the webhooks from Stripe against our local server.

Running the Next.js development server

Run the following command from your IDE or from your terminal:

npm run dev

This command will start the Next.js server at localhost:3000. If you navigate to this page, you should be able to see the landing page of your application:

Running the Firebase Emulators

To interact with Firebase's services, such as Auth, Firestore, and Storage, we need to run the Firebase emulators. To do so, open a new terminal (or, better, from your IDE) and run the following command:

npm run firebase:emulators:start

If everything is working correctly, you will see the output below:

┌────────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Emulator       │ Host:Port      │ View in Emulator UI             │
├────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Authentication │ localhost:9099 │ http://localhost:4000/auth      │
├────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Firestore      │ localhost:8080 │ http://localhost:4000/firestore │
├────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Pub/Sub        │ localhost:8085 │ n/a                             │
├────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Storage        │ localhost:9199 │ http://localhost:4000/storage   │
└────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘
  Emulator Hub running at localhost:4400
  Other reserved ports: 4500, 9150

By default, we run the emulator for the following services: Authentication, Firestore, and Storage. However, you can easily add Firebase Functions and PubSub.

Firebase Emulator UI

As you can see from the View in Emulator UI column, you have access to the Emulator UI, which helps you see and edit your Firebase Emulator data using a nifty UI that resembles the Firebase Console.

For example, to display the list of users that have signed up, navigate to the Authentication Emulator.

Makerkit's template adds some data to your project by default for testing reasons

Makerkit's template adds some data to your project by default for testing reasons. In fact, the data you see is used to run the Cypress E2E tests. This is why you'll see some pre-populated data in your Firestore and Authentication tabs.

Running the Stripe CLI (optional)

Optionally, if you want to run Stripe locally (e.g., sending webhooks to your local server), you will also need to run the following command:

npm run stripe:listen

This command requires Docker, but you can alternatively install Stripe on your OS and change the command to use stripe directly.

The above command runs the Stripe CLI and will route webhooks coming from Stripe to your local endpoint. For example, in the Makerkit starter, this endpoint is /api/stripe/webhook.

When running the command, it will print a webhook key used to sign the messages from Stripe. You will need to add this key to your local environment variables file as below:

STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=<KEY>

The webhook printed should not change, so you may only need to do this the first time.