Firebase — A Comprehensive App Development Platform
What is Firebase?
Firebase is a platform developed by Google for creating web and mobile applications development that helps you build, improve, and grow your app.
Firebase is a toolset to “build, improve, and grow your app”, and therefore the tools it gives you cover an outsized portion of the services that developers would normally need to create themselves, but don’t actually need to create, because they’d preferably be that specialize in the app experience itself. This includes things like authentication, push messaging, databases, analytics, file storage, configuration, and therefore the list goes on. The services are hosted in the cloud, and scale with little to no effort on the part of the developer. Client SDKs provided by Firebase interact with these back end services directly, with no need to establish any middle ware between your app and the service. So, if you’re using one of the Firebase database options, you typically write code to query the database in your client app.
There’s really no limit to the types of apps that can be helped by Firebase products. There are only limits to the platforms it can be used on. iOS and Android are the primary targets for the Firebase SDKs, and there’s increasing support for web, Flutter, Unity, and C++. You should also know there’s an Admin SDK available for a variety of languages, to be used with any backend components. On top of these SDKs, there is a library called FirebaseUI (Android, iOS, web) that gives a lots of helpful utilities to form of development with Firebase even easier.
How to build better app using Firebase?
1. Firebase Cloud Firestore
Cloud Firestore is realtime, cloud hosted, NoSQL database. Cloud Firestore is a flexible, scalable database for mobile app, web app, and server development from Firebase and Google Cloud Platform. Cloud Firestore provide database service for store and sync app data at global scale. It keeps your data in sync across client apps using realtime listeners and offers offline support, so you can build responsive apps that work against network latency or Internet connectivity. Cloud Firestore also offers smooth integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products, including Cloud Functions.
Key capabilities
· Flexibility
· Expressive querying
· Realtime updates
· Offline support
· Designed to scale
2. Firebase Machine Learning
Use machine learning in your apps to solve real-world problems. Firebase Machine Learning provide SDK for Common Machine Learning Task. Firebase Machine Learning is a mobile SDK that brings Google’s machine learning expertise to Android and iOS apps in a powerful yet easy-to-use package. If you are new in machine learning, you can implement the functionality in just few lines of code. There is no need to have deep knowledge of neural networks or model optimization to get started. If you are an experienced Machine Learning developer, Firebase Machine Learning provides convenient APIs that help you to use your custom models in your mobile apps.
Key capabilities
· Host and deploy custom models
· Automatically train models
· Production ready for common use cases
3. Firebase Cloud Function
Cloud Functions for Firebase is a serverless framework that lets you automatically run backend code in response to events triggered by Firebase features and HTTPS requests. There is no got to manage and scale your own servers. JavaScript or TypeScript code is stored in Google’s cloud and runs during a managed environment.
Key capabilities
· Integrate the firebase platform
· Zero maintenance
· Keep your logic private and secure
Read Also: JavaScript Vs TypeScript
4. Firebase Authentication
Firebase authentication provides simple, free multi-platform sign-in. Knowing a user’s identity allows an app to securely save user data within the cloud and supply the same personalized experience across all of the user’s devices. Firebase Authentication provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular unite identification providers like Google, Facebook and Twitter, and more. Firebase Authentication integrates tightly with other Firebase services, and it leverages industry standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, so it’s easily integrated at the same time with your custom backend.
Key capabilities
· Drop in authentication solution
· Email Password based authentication
· Federated identity provider integration
· Phone number authentication
· Custom auth system integration
· Anonymous auth
5. Firebase Hosting
Firebase hosting provides fast and secure global web hosting for your web app, static and dynamic content, and microservices. Firebase Hosting is production-grade web page hosting for developers. With one command, you can easily deploy web apps and serve both dynamic and static content to a worldwide CDN (content delivery network). You can also make pair Firebase Hosting with Cloud Functions or Cloud Run to create and host microservices on Firebase.
Key capabilities
· Serve content over a secure connection
· Host static and dynamic content plus microservices
· Deliver content fast
· Develop new versions with one command
· Rollback with one click
6. Firebase Cloud Storage
Firebase cloud storage provides massive scalable file storage. Cloud Storage is made for those mobile app developers who need to store and serve user generated content, like videos or photos. Cloud Storage for Firebase may be a strong, effortless, and worthwhile object storage service built for Google scale. The Firebase SDKs for Cloud Storage add Google security to file uploads and downloads for your Firebase apps. You can use firebase SDKs to store audio, video, images, or any other user-generated content. On the server, you can use Google Cloud Storage, to access the same files.
Key capabilities
· Robust operation
· Strong security
· High scalability
7. Firebase Realtime Database
Firebase Realtime Database is store and sync data with our NoSQL cloud database. Data is synced across all clients in realtime, and remains accessible when your app goes offline. The Firebase Realtime Database is the cloud-hosted database. Data is stored as JSON format and synchronized in simultaneously to each connected client. Once you build cross-platform apps with our iOS, Android, and JavaScript SDKs, all of your clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the most recent data.
Key capabilities
· Realtime
· Offline
· Accessible from client devices
· Scalable across multiple databases
Reference url: https://firebase.google.com/products#develop-products
