Google Translate API and Firebase Firestore are killing each other

Question

We\'re trying to write a Google Cloud Function that gets a translation from Google Translate API, and then write the results to our Firebase Firestore database. Each works a

Answer 1

You're not returning a promise that's resolved when all the async work is complete. If you don't do that, Cloud Functions assumes that all your work is complete, and will clamp down on all resources, and any pending work will be shut down.

The promise returned by translate.translate().then().catch() is being ignored. Your nested call to admin.firestore()...set() has a similar problem. It's not sufficient to just call then() and catch() on every promise because then() and catch() both return yet another promise.

You're also unnecessarily mixing usage of try/catch with catch() on the promise. You don't need both strategies for error handling, just one or the other.

When you used await in your second example, you forced JavaScript to pause until the async work represented by the promise returned by set() was complete. This allowed your function to return only after all the work was finished, which is why it worked correctly.

You might be helped by watching my video series on use of promises and async/await in Cloud Functions. Proper handling of promises is crucial to creating a correctly working function.