Constructor does not normalize arguments in all cases

[jmdobry]

The PubSub constructor function contains

if (!(this instanceof PubSub)) {
  options = common.util.normalizeArguments(this, options);
  return new PubSub(options);
}

but that code is only activated when PubSub is used as a factory function. This is a problem when PubSub is used as a constructor, i.e. new PubSub(). common.util.normalizeArguments performs inference of the projectId, so when doing new PubSub(), it no longer recognizes your GCLOUD_PROJECT environment variable.

The problem of not calling normalizeArguments for all cases can be found in a bunch of Google Cloud Node libraries.

[jmdobry]

Here's an example:

process.env.GCLOUD_PROJECT = 'my-project';
const PubSub = require('@google-cloud/pubsub');
PubSub().topic('my-topic').name; // projects/my-project/topics/my-topic
(new PubSub()).topic('my-topic').name; // projects/{{projectId}}/topics/my-topic

[stephenplusplus]

@callmehiphop it seems that there was a reason we didn't normalize the arguments outside of that block. Do you remember if there was one?

[callmehiphop]

If I had a guess I would say it was because at one time we only had a single module in which the only accessors for services, like PubSub, were factory patterns. I think the ability to instantiate clients is more recent than this code and it simply got overlooked.