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If you are the type of person who loves to meet urgent humanitarian needs through a mobile app, then you must know Firebase.

Firebase is a platform launched by Google that specialized in developing smart device applications.

The platform includes a toolkit that covers a large part of the services that developers usually have to build themselves, but prefer to focus on the application experience itself. This includes analytics, authentication, databases, file storage, etc.

Services are hosted in the cloud and can be expanded without any effort on the part of the developer. By cloud hosting, we mean that the products contain back-end services that are fully maintained and operated by Google.

The SDK provided by Firebase interacts with these back-end services directly, without the need for any middleware between your application and the service.

So, if you’re using one of the FireBase database options, you’ll usually write code to query your app’s database.

This is different from traditional application development, which usually involves writing both front-end and back-end programs.

The front-end code of the application calls the final API paths that the backend is exposed to so that the backend code actually runs.

On the other end, Firebase tools bypass the traditional backend to leave the task to the client, as each of these tools is accessible via the Firebase console.

Because of the way Firebase tools work, some might call the latter a “Platform as a Service” or a “Backend as a Service”.

But I’d prefer not to include Firebase in one of these two templates, and I’ll show you why shortly.

What kind of applications is compatible with Firebase?

In fact, there is no limit to the types of applications that are compatible with Firebase, only limits to the platforms that can be used with them.

The two main firebase SDKs are iOS and Android, and there is growing support for the web, the open-source Flutter UI development kit, the Unity game engine, and the C++ programming language.

In addition to the development software packages, there is a library called FirebaseUI that provides a set of useful utilities to make development with Firebase easier.

There are also projects like AngularFire that subject web development software packages to use with Angular’s web interface design framework. It is open source by the way.

So, what is Firebase?

Realtime Database

Real-time data is the way to the future. Nothing compares to it.

Most databases require you to call HTTP to get and sync your data. So it ‘only’ gives you the data when it’s requested/invoked.

When you connect your app to Firebase, you are not communicating over the regular HTTP protocol. Rather, it is via WebSockets (which is much faster than HTTP).

Not only that, but Firebase automatically syncs all of your data over a single WebSocket as fast as the user’s network can handle.

Firebase sends new data as soon as it is updated. When your customer (user) saves a change in data, all connected clients receive the updated data in real-time.

File Storage

Firebase Storage provides a simple way to save files to Google Cloud Storage right from the client!

And Firebase Storage has its own system of security rules to protect your GCloud bucket from the masses while granting detailed write privileges to your authenticated clients.

Firebase Storage has its own system of security rules to protect your GCloud from public (public) modifications while granting separate write privileges to your authorized clients.

Authentication system

Firebase auth has an email and password authentication system. It also supports the two-factor authentication system for Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

One of the advantages of Firebase Auth is its ability to integrate directly into the Firebase database, which you can use to control access to your data.

Hosting System

Firebase includes an easy-to-use hosting service for all your static files. To make the development process even easier, Firebase uses the Firebase Superstatic hosting service, which you can run on your local server for all of your tests.

Firebase Pros

•     Email, Password, Google, Facebook, and Github Authentication.
•     Data in real-time.
•     Full API compatibility.
•     An internal security system at the level of nodes in the data tree.
•     File storage is supported by Google Cloud Storage.
•     Fixed file hosting service.
•     Manipulate data (as streams) to create highly scalable applications.

Cons of Firebase

•     Limited query capacity due to its data transfer model.
•     SQL function porting is not supported (due to data models mismatch with NoSQL)
•     Does not include a base for installation.

Also, read – All you really want to be aware of is the Internet of Things – IoT in 2022

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February 20, 2023