$http.get returns index.html using Firebase hosting

ionic-v1
1

Hello all, we currently have a Ionic v1 project that calls an API implemented as a Google App Engine application. This Ionic app runs with Ionic serve, PhoneGap, and when deployed to Android/iOS.

We are now trying to deploy to the web using Firebase hosting.

The initial HTML/JS code all runs correctly until we reach an $http.get call to the Google App Engine. What happens then is that the request reaches the GAE server and is processed correctly there with a response being sent back. But in the client code, the response.data property is the contents of the Firebase application’s index.html rather than the response that was supplied from GAE.

We don’t know why this is happening, or how to fix it, but here are some relevant facts:

  1. When we run the app on a device using PhoneGap or via the Google Playstore, the URL by which we access GAE is the same URL if we were accessing GAE from a browser. But, when we run the app via “ionic serve” we must use a proxy to work around a CORS issue. What we do is to specify a simplified URL in the Ionic code, and then provide a mapping of that simplified URL to the GAE’s actual URL in a file called “ionic.project” which looks something like this:
    image
  2. When we attempt to deploy the app via either “firebase deploy” or “firebase serve” we must use the proxy version of the URL in our $http.get call. Otherwise the call does not reach the GAE server at all. It is not clear how Firebase knows to use “ionic.project” for the proxy mapping.
  3. We are not using “Angularfire”, only the standard AngularJS library that is packaged with Ionic 1.x