In this repo you will find the code and instructions to host an auction website for free using GitHub Pages and Firebase anonymous authentication & databases.
This is a project I originally worked on for a charity event and I've been improving it in my spare time ever since. Contributions and suggestions are welcome!
- Device based login requiring only a username to be provided (no need to store sensitive information).
- Popups for more detailed descriptions and additional imagery.
- Realtime bidding using event listeners (no need to refresh page).
- Built with Bootstrap so everything is reactive.
- Has a separate page for administrators to monitor the auction.
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Here we will cover how to add your own information to the auctions themselves, finally how to connect it all to Firebase to enable user login and bidding.
To develop and deploy your own auction, you'll need to install nodejs
. To do this, follow the instructions here.
Then, insall the required packages as follows:
npm install
You can now host a development server by running:
npm start
You can run the following to make sure that your auction will deploy properly:
npm run build
Your website will deploy automatically using the .github\workflows\pages.yml.
First, set demo = false
in src\App.js
(this stop the timers from automatically resetting).
Then, populate public\items.yml
with the information for of the items you'll be putting up for auction. The fields are:
id
(Number
): the ID of the itemprimaryImage
(String
): URL of the primary image (relative if included inpublic
, absolute if hosted elsewhere)title
(String
): item titlesubtitle
(String
): item subtitledetail
(String
): item detail textsecondaryImage
(String
): URL of the secondary image (relative if included inpublic
, absolute if hosted elsewhere)currency
(String
): the currency symbol to useamount
(Number
): item starting price,endTime
(string
): item end time in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ
)
Here we will cover how to set up your Firebase project and then how to enable the Firebase authentication and database respectively.
You can create a project using the following steps:
- Head to the Firebase console where you can manage your projects.
- Click
Add project
and name your project. - Then you may enable or disable Google Analytics at your discretion.
- You will then be taken to your project's overview where you will add a web app to your project by clicking
Add app
and selecting the web app icon (the app's name is arbitrary and is only used to identify the app within your project if, for example, you had multiple apps in the same project). - Now that you have created an app you should be shown a code snippet containing
firebaseConfig
. Copy everything insidefirebaseConfig
to thefirebaseConfig
variable inindex.html
.
The code snippet containing
firebaseConfig
and the current version can be found inProject settings
if you need to refer to it later.
Head to your project's console and click on Authentication in the menu on the left. Then go to the Sign-in method tab and enable toggle switch for the Anonymous sign-in provider.
Setting up the database is a little more involved so here are the steps you must take:
- Head to your project's console and click on Database in the menu on the left. Then click on
Create database
(the mode you start in does not matter because we are about to set proper rules anyway). - Then chose which region you want your Firestore to be stored (check the server locations here if there are multiple in your region).
- Head to the
Rules
tab and paste the following rules:rules_version = '2'; service cloud.firestore { match /databases/{database}/documents { // Checks that new data doesn't overwrite or delete an existing bid function isFieldOverWrite() { let editedKeys = request.resource.data.diff(resource.data); return editedKeys.changedKeys().union(editedKeys.removedKeys()).size() > 0 } // Checks user has anonymous account and has "signed up" (i.e. provided a displayName) function isLoggedIn() { return request.auth != null && exists(/databases/$(database)/documents/users/$(request.auth.uid)) } // Checks the user is logged in and if their user data contains the admin password function isAdmin() { return isLoggedIn() && get(/databases/$(database)/documents/users/$(request.auth.uid)).data.admin == "insert long random secret string" } // Make sure the uid of the requesting user matches name of the user // document. The wildcard expression {userId} makes the userId variable // available in rules. match /users/{userId} { allow read, update, delete: if isAdmin() || request.auth != null && request.auth.uid == userId; allow create: if request.auth != null && request.auth.uid == userId; } // Auction can always be read, updated only if the user is logged in and // isn't overwiting someone else's bid, and created or deleted by admins match /auction/items { allow get, list: if true; allow update : if isAdmin() || isLoggedIn() && !isFieldOverWrite() allow create, delete: if isAdmin(); } } }
- These rules state that:
- Users can only read and write to their own user data, keeping usernames private and admin passwords.
- The auction document may be read by anyone and only updated if the user is logged in and is not modifying or deleting existing bids. This document is what your clients will fetch the current state of the auction from. No usernames are stored here, only the bid amount and the user's UID (which is randomly generated by Firebase and is completely non-identifying to any prying eyes).
- Admins can access all auction and user data.
The final step in setting up your auction is to create an admin account and use it to initialise and monitor your auction.
To create an admin account:
- Host your website either locally or on GitHub Pages and log in to the website.
- Then go to your Firestore console and find the document for the user you just created.
- In this document there will be an empty
admin
field, this is where your admin password will live. You will never need to type this password, so the longer and more complicated the better, consider using something like an MD5 hash. - Go to your Firestore rules and replace
insert long random secret string
with the password you just created.
Please don't reuse one of your existing passwords! While the Firestore rules should prevent bad actors from reading your user's data, don't risk it. I can't be responsible for leaked passwords due to a misconfigured project
To initialise the auctions:
- With the device you used to create your admin account, head to your website and navigate to the admin page by clicking the
Admin
button in the top right. - Click the
Update & Reset All
button.
While on this Admin
page you can also:
- Monitor the status of the auction and see who is winning each item.
- Update an item's (or all items') details without deleting the bid history.
- Reset an item's (or all items') bid history without editing the item's details.