"test cedric" in production — why you need three separate Firebase projects
A test push notification sent in production to thousands of a bank's customers. Every mobile dev's dreaded scenario, and the simple practice that prevents it.
Yesterday morning, Crédit Agricole (a major French bank) sent a push notification reading "test cedric" to thousands of customers. 😱 The app crashed right after. The whole thing ended up on Twitter/X.
Cédric probably had a very long day.
A test notification sent to production. The classic scenario every mobile dev dreads.
The good practice
It's simple: three well-separated Firebase projects.
- 🔴 Production — real users, real data
- 🟡 Staging — QA, validations
- 🟢 Dev — tests, experiments
Each with its own environment type configured. Each with its own keys, its own rules, its own notification flows.
A detail that saves Cédric from updating his LinkedIn profile.
(If you're reading this, Cédric: hang in there. We've all been there.)