Specifically, the shell commands here (in conjunction with the underlying GCP toolchain) can:

• Install and configure the Google Cloud Function Emulator
• Easily switch between cloud and emulator GCF targets
• Deploy Background Cloud Functions, both locally and to production
• Trigger Cloud Pubsub messages easily from the command line including data and attributes

Mostly, the scripts handle the steppiness and complexity of the above tasks and aim to help you develop faster and spend less time trying to grok and remember command line flags.

These scripts were originally written in response to some of the challenges of getting a small team in flow while learning how to develop GCF background functions -- in this context, setup and configuration, and finding an easy way to invoke functions locally, emerged as greater friction points than the actual coding of the Node handlers.

You might find gcf-tools useful if:

• [gcf-emulator] You need to frequently switch your dev environment GCF target between the Cloud Function Emulator and GCP.
• [gcf-call] You test cloud functions in your shell and don't enjoy formatting JSON on the command line.
• [gcf-deploy-pubsub] You deploy GCF background functions to the cloud and emulator and get confused about the flags and small differences between the two, and/or you sometimes forget to set the right gcloud config when deploying.

The last one is probably less useful for teams that have some sort of orchestration tool for their development environments.

You can, of course, call these scripts from inside your test or build enviroments as well.

Call cloud functions running in the emulator.

Usage:
-----
gcf-call --name funcName --message msg [--attr1 value --attr2 value ...]

Flags:
-----
-h --help	: This help message
-m --message	: The message (data) to pass to the function
-n --name	: The name of the GCF function to call
--*		: Any argument pairs beginning with -- will get passed as 
		  attributes to the called function

This command spares you from having to base64 encode your message or pass JSON on the command line. Use functions logs read to read the node log output.

Deploy GCF Pubsub background functions to the emulator or to the cloud

Usage:
-----
gcf-deploy-pubsub [-l] --name nnnn --topic tttt --entry-point funcName [/path/to/nodefuncdir]

If the codepath is omitted, the current working directory is assumed.

Flags:
-----
-e --entry-point	: Code entry point function (required)
-h --help		: This help message
-l --local		: Deploy locally, to the emulator [off/cloud]
-m --memory		: Memory allocation, numeric, in MB (128,256,512,1024,2048) [128]
-n --name		: GCF name (required)
-p --project		: The GCP Project to deploy to [current project]
-s --stage-bucket	: Deployment stage bucket [last utilized stage bucket]
-t --topic		: Topic channel (required)

gcf-deploy-pubsub irons out some of the small differences between deploying to the local emulator and deploying the cloud.

--stage-bucket is only needed for cloud deploys. Since it's highly likely that every single cloud deploy for a project will use the same storage bucket, the last-used storage bucket is saved and used as the default when the argument is omitted.

gcf-deploy-pubsub will switch the current cloud configuration when it runs, so it's dependent on either using gcf-emulate to set up and manage the emulator or on using the configuration pattern described in the emulator docs.

Node code changes in the emulator are picked up immediately, there's no need to redeploy emulator functions after a code change.

Install and control the local Google Cloud Functions Emulator

Usage:
-----
gcf-emulator --config default|emulator | --init | --start | --stop

Flags:
-----
-c --config		: Swap the gcloud config between 'default' and 'emulator'
-h --help		: This help message
-i --init		: Install the emulator and set up a mutated config to utilize it
--start			: Set the config to 'emulator' and start the emulator
--stop			: Restore the default config and stop the emulator

Put the bin folder into your path (or don't)

• bash
• gcloud
• npm
• Perl5

• GCF Emulator Docs @ Google
• Cloud Functions Emulator on Github

The original goal of this project was to redirect pubsub messages from a local instance of the Standard Go Environment to the emulator instead of the cloud. It would seem that this should be possible but I was unable to do it. gcf-emulate is useful for developing, debugging and testing, but complete local intergration testing is still missing this piece. Tips appreciated.

In most (or at least some) cases, the tool will fail sanely if you are missing basics like gcloud, but the handling and messaging for these cases could be cleaner.

While the syntactical nuttiness of bash scripting is always fun, I'm sure there are some bits that can be written better. Improvements welcome via PR.