15 ms·

Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

530 points by Nemant 10y ago

maaaats 10y ago
This may be a stupid question, but: What do you use it for? Cannot everyone basically edit the client code and do whatever with your data? I've only used Firebase for prototyping.
- Diamons 10y ago
  I use Firebase in lieu of running my own NodeJS server. I can use a backend PHP web server but still provide realtime capabilities to my app users by using Firebase as a pub/sub system.
- plexicle 10y ago
  Authentication is built-in. You can authenticate users and give them specific access with a JSON-like file that lives on the server. It actually works wonderfully.
  - atom-morgan 10y ago
    So if someone were switching from Mongo/Mongoose to Firebase, what's the biggest difference?
- struct 10y ago
  The realtime database is IMO very cool and it's definitely worth it just for that, but integrated analytics and cloud notifications takes it to the next level.
  - mayop100 10y ago
    We hope you'll give the new features a try and let us know what you think!
- welanes 10y ago
  I use it for its main selling point: a realtime backend. With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. As for security - the Firebase security rules and server side authentication allow you to lock things down.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. > It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. You can get the same if you use other tools. The realtime stuff is the only big thing they do most other projects don’t, and even for that there are currently several quite well working implementations out there.
    - welanes 10y ago
      Sure. But now I have all this in one service. And when that pet project moves from web to a native app, Firebase has all the trappings to make it easy. A lot of eggs in one basket admittedly, but that basket looks pretty robust for now.
- jwngr 10y ago
  That's what the Database Security Rules [1] are for. If you want to learn more, check out my I/O talk tomorrow called "The key to Firebase security" [2]. [1] http://firebase.google.com/docs/database/security http://firebase.google.com/docs/database/security [2] https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=af641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=af641ff7-0bef-...
mayop100 10y ago
(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote configuration, updates to auth, etc. Perhaps more important though are the new solutions for later in your app’s lifecycle. We’ve added analytics, crash reporting, dynamic linking, and a bunch more so that we can continue to support you after you’ve built and launched your app too. I'd suggest reading the blog post for more info: https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/05/firebase-expands-to-become-unified-app-platform.html https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/05/firebase-expands-to-... This is the first cut of a lot of new features, and we’re eager to hear what the Hacker News community thinks. I look forward to your comments!
- _kyran 10y ago
  Looks great! It will certainly be filling the void that Parse's departue left. Google already offered a lot more more than other platforms (ios) in terms of analytics and this just makes that gap even bigger.
- plexicle 10y ago
  Hello there. I love Firebase. Use it every day. The one big request I've always had was to be able to grab the client's IP address on request. Is that possible with this new Firebase and GCE integration? I have many Firebase apps. Most of them have an intermediate server solely for this one reason.
  - mayop100 10y ago
    This isn't something we support out of the box yet, but I'll definitely discuss this with the team. Thanks for the feedback!
  - velohx 10y ago
    That's a feature I would also really like. I also use an intermediate server (ipify.org) to get the IP address. The only reason I need the IP address is to throttle users. If adjustable throttling was baked into the platform and not require me to write logic to handle it, that would be sweet too.
fredthedinosaur 10y ago
When will it support a count query? now to be able to count number of children I have to download all the data. Count is such an important feature for me.
- vinaybn 10y ago
  You could run your writes as transactions that increments a count wherever you need one.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bwship 10y ago
We've been using the Firebase platform for a while now. It's pretty cool to see them expand from 3 products to ~15 overnight. I'm most excited about their analytics and crash reporting. I must say that their system has been one of the best we have used in a longtime, I am really excited to see other aspects like analytics and ads being housed under this same umbrella, as I think it is going to help with development time overall. One area that I'd like to see improved though is a deeper querying language for database, or even better would be a way to automatically export the system in realtime to a postgres database for better SQL type analytics.
WalterSear 10y ago
I'm in talks with a company regarding building an application for users in developing countries, where Android 2.0 is still the dominant OS version. Firebase 2.0 looks like a great fit for their needs otherwise, but is the new sdk backward compatible to Android 2.0?
ivolo 10y ago
We used the original Firebase database product to build http://socrates.io/ http://socrates.io/ 3.5 years ago, and I remember getting Socrates running in a few hours. I’m looking forward to seeing them up the bar on speed of development / ease for their next 10 products :) Nice work team!
mybigsword 10y ago
way too risky to use it for startups. Google may discontinue this project at any time and you have to spend months to rewrite everything for another database. IF google open source it and we will be able to install it on premise and patch without Google, that would be ok. So, I would recommend to use PostgreSQL instead.
- lukeholder 10y ago
  Recommend looking at Rethinkdb :) They just announced Horizon too.
  - mybigsword 10y ago
    Yes, this may be a good option. I just never tried it or worked with it, so I can't say anything about it.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  Google is dogfooding this in it's other companies, like Nest, fwiw.
  - edko 10y ago
    Well, yes, but if they decide to discontinue the service, or increase the price, this is no guarantee that all other users will get the same treatment as Alphabet companies.
  - jfoster 10y ago
    They always say that. Google's internal customers also get to continue access after a product has "been retired" (eg. Chrome Web Store still using Google Wallet's web payments) and are in a different position than Google's external customers when it comes to negotiability and notification period.
- marknutter 10y ago
  Way to risky not to use for startups, IMO. What would you prefer, spending half your time doing backend development to get a system that might be 80% as reliable as Firebase on the off chance that your startup will survive long enough for your custom engineered solution to bare fruit, or spending all your time actually building your product and launching quickly so you can determine whether or not your startup is even viable?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Blixz 10y ago
So, Still no offline persistence for JS. What a huge disappointment.
- EuAndreh 10y ago
  Yep, no way close to PouchDB.
- pier25 10y ago
  Are you sure? They seem to advertise offline persistence for both mobile and web. https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/#key_functions https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/#key_functions
- mbleigh 10y ago
  Check out my I/O talk on Friday (Progressive Web Apps on Firebase). While the Firebase Web SDK doesn't support persistent offline just yet, we do have some new ways to get the job done. https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?filters=Firebase&sid=ff641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7#day3/ff641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?filters=Firebase&s...
  - pier25 10y ago
    Um... what about this? https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/offline-capabilities#section-presence https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/offline-capabi...
    - mbleigh 10y ago
      The Firebase JS SDK currently supports non-persistent offline. So long as you keep the tab open, Firebase works great offline! However, if you go offline and then try to refresh the content, none of it will be persistently stored or accessible until you go back online.
      - pier25 10y ago
        Thanks for the clarification. I was hoping to use Firebase on a React Native app but I do need persistence. Do you have or plan to make some wrapper of the native iOS/Android SDKs for React Native?
zammitjames 10y ago
We were part of the Early Access Program for the expanded Firebase and used it to build our music collaboration app Kwaver. With the new features, they did a nice job of collecting a bunch of related mobile products (Analytics, Push Notifications, Storage, Authentication, Database, Deep Linking, etc) into a pretty cohesive platform, and it's saved us a bunch of time. With Firebase Analytics we can track events, segment audiences (according to user properties; active, dormant, inactive) and take action according to the user segment. We are able to send push notifications (also using Firebase) to dormant male users who play the piano for example. Another cool feature is Remote Config, which gives you the option to ship a number of separate experiences and track the user interaction. Like A/B Testing but way more flexible. For us, the best product is the existing database product they had, as it really improves our user experience to ditch the 'pull to refresh' button' and have our app respond to changes live. We have been waiting for Google to provide developers a more complete mobile solution for a while now, and they’ve done it superbly through Firebase! Feedback; It would be really cool if Firebase could implement UTM codes to be able to track user acquisition and be able to automate actions according to User Properties. Shameless plug: if you're a musician (or a music fan), we'd really appreciate if you could download our music collaboration app, try it out and give us feedback. It’s available for free on the app store; The following link will re-direct you there later today. http://kwaver.com http://kwaver.com
themihai 10y ago
"... and earn more money." Is this really necessary on the homepage? Sounds like a old misleading spam page
primitivesuave 10y ago
Firebase is an incredibly powerful tool, and in a sense is a "democratizing force" in web development. Now anyone can build a complete web application without needing to know anything about setting up servers, content delivery networks, AWS (which is still quite difficult to use), and scaling. I teach kids as young as 10 years old to build iOS apps and websites with Firebase - they can develop locally and push to Firebase hosting with a single command. After exploring this new update, I can say with confidence that literally everything is easy-to-use now. Whenever there is a Firebase announcement there are many replies along the lines of "this won't work for me because it's owned by Google, may be discontinued, doesn't have on-premise solution, etc". If these are your thoughts then you are missing the point of Firebase. It enables small web development shops like mine to focus on building beautiful web applications without having to give up manpower toward backend engineering. The cost of using Firebase is peanuts compared to the savings in employee hours. Perhaps some day we will have to migrate elsewhere, but I find that possibility extremely unlikely because the clear amount of effort it took to create the Google-y version means this is a long-term play.
- samastur 10y ago
  We are not missing the point. Some of us just happen to value other things more than convenience. There's no shortage of discontinued products that were cancelled even though a lot of effort and money was poured into them. Amount previously invested is a sunk cost and shouldn't even matter when deciding if continue a service/product or not. Just because you have already dig a hole doesn't mean you should keep digging even though you can't profit from it.
  - primitivesuave 10y ago
    This is a good point. However, products are usually discontinued because they no longer fit in with the core business of the acquirer. In this case, Google is making a clear statement that Firebase will be an integral part of the Google Cloud experience for everyone (hobbyists all the way to apps at scale).
  - iofj 10y ago
    > sunk cost and shouldn't even matter Shouldn't but does. It has it's own fallacy section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_t... Also, not falling for the fallacy means admitting defeat. And the higher up one is in an organization, the worse admitting defeat is for your career. Having a product dead-ended by keeping on working on it forever is much better for manager/government official careers. So sadly, the fact that other people (above you) fall for the fallacy makes falling for it yourself rational in a lot of cases. Instead just systematically lower the priority, but never to zero. In anything but a startup, I would treat any sunk cost above a minimal level as a firm commitment to continue at any cost. I would never have done so 5 years ago, but ...
kawera 10y ago
Question: Would Firebase be a good option where the desktop/web app is the main access point, mobile been secondary (around 3:1) ?
- mayop100 10y ago
  Most likely, yes. Everything we have for mobile web works just as well for desktop web too.
Kiro 10y ago
I'm building a simple web app where I want signed in users to be able to add a JSON object to a database and then list all JSON objects publicly. Only the user who created the object should be able to edit it. Is this a good use-case for Firebase or should I look into something else?
- espeed 10y ago
  yes, Firebase allows you to isolate user data, and it has built-in auth API.
timjver 10y ago
I love Firebase, but the Swift code in the iOS guide is of really low quality. For example (https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/ios/save-data#delete_data https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/ios/save-data#dele...): if currentData.value != nil, let uid = FIRAuth.auth()?.currentUser?.uid { var post = currentData.value as! [String : AnyObject] var stars : Dictionary<String, Bool> stars = post["stars"] as? Dictionary<String, Bool> ?? [:] // ... } What this should really be: guard let post = currentData.value as? [String : AnyObject], uid = FIRAuth.auth()?.currentUser?.uid else { return FIRTransactionResult.successWithValue(currentData) } let stars = post["stars"] as? [String : Bool] ?? [:] // ... }
- ianbarber 10y ago
  Great suggestion! Pull requests welcome as well if you have time: https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-ios/blob/master/database/DatabaseExampleSwift/PostTableViewCell.swift#L50 https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-ios/blob/master/datab...
  - timjver 10y ago
    Oh cool, I already sent feedback through the Firebase website but I'll do this as well.
chatmasta 10y ago
Interesting that Google is doubling down where Facebook divested. The obvious difference is that Google has a cloud platform and Firebase is a funnel into it, whereas Facebook had nothing to funnel Parse users into. I wonder if Facebook will ever launch a cloud platform. They've got the computing resources for it.
- csmajorfive 10y ago
  They probably won't.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  Your first hint that Google was very serious about cloud, was when we hired Diane Greene: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hires-diane-greene-to-run-cloud-2015-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hires-diane-greene-to-... Also when Urs publically states he wants Google Cloud revenue to be bigger than adwords, that ain't nothing: http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-beat-search-2015-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-... I know it's popular to be cynical about Google and how we'll deprecate everything just as it's popular, but that kind of cynicism isn't really good for your health.
robotnoises 10y ago
I don't think it was explicitly mentioned in the keynote, but it looks like they updated pricing: https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ Can't find the old pricing now, but it seems similar, but with less plan types.
- mayop100 10y ago
  Yes! We updated our pricing. We have fewer plan types (just 3 now), and now have a pay-as-you-go plan which is designed for maximum flexibility. This pricing is cheaper for almost every developer.
  - robotnoises 10y ago
    Oh sweet, I just noticed that under the new pricing, the free plan includes a custom domain and ssl cert. This was literally the only reason I updated one of my legacy hobby apps to the old Spark ($5 per month for the uninitiated).
- pritambarhate 10y ago
  Here is one third party link I found which still shows old pricing: https://www.g2crowd.com/products/firebase/pricing https://www.g2crowd.com/products/firebase/pricing If this link is correct the new plans have a changed a bit, but pricing per GB seems to be more or less the same. A few dollars here and there. But this shows that the plans can and will change. Smaller services like Compose.io (https://www.compose.io/pricing/ https://www.compose.io/pricing/) and mLab (https://mlab.com/plans/pricing/ https://mlab.com/plans/pricing/) seem to be charging around USD 15-18 per GB of DB for MongoDB. So either Firebase is less resource hungry for Google or Google's scale is allowing them to reap better efficiency or Google is subsidising Firebase and giving it almost at cost.
choward 10y ago
Provide a self hosting option or GTFO.
- milesward 10y ago
  https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon
gcatalfamo 10y ago
Can somebody explain the new Firebase reframing towards GCP? Maybe with another provider analogy? (e.g.,Firebase is to GCP like Parse is(was) to Facebook)
- inlined 10y ago
  I cover this briefly in my talk today: "Migrate to Firebase" [1]. Google Cloud Platform gives you massively scalable & robust building blocks at the IaaS and PaaS level. You can use these to do just about anything as long as you have the time and expertise. Combining building blocks to follow best practices isn't always trivial, so Firebase offers the next layer higher in the stack. With Firebase you can mix and match pieces that integrate together to be a turn-key backend. We also offer additional services to help you make your app successful once it's been built. Firebase and Google Cloud Platform play nicely together and we've made sure you can mix and match the pieces you need. E.g. Firebase Storage lets you use Firebase Rules to secure Google Cloud Storage. The new server-side APIs for Firebase are authenticated with the Google's IAM policies. The two teams are partners and we're excited to be working together. 1. https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=b4641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7#day1/b4641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=b4641ff7-0bef-...
  - gcatalfamo 10y ago
    This is great! thank you!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
joeblau 10y ago
I remember walking into Firebase's offices about 4 years ago when it was 4 people on Townsend St in SOMA in a 300 square foot share office space. It's amazing to see how far they've come; Congrats to the whole team.
- mayop100 10y ago
  Thanks Joe! : ) I remember that day.
davidkhess 10y ago
The concern I've always had with Firebase is the lack of a business logic layer between clients and the database. This tends to force the business logic into the clients themselves. Trying to change the schema if you have Firebase clients deployed that can't be instantly upgraded via a browser refresh (i.e. iOS and Android mobile apps) seems an extremely challenging task.
- atom-morgan 10y ago
  > Trying to change the schema That's the biggest question I have after looking over the site. Coming from the Mongo/Mongoose world what happens in this case?
  - davidkhess 10y ago
    There used to be a thread in the Firebase Google group about this which is gone now. It still lives on here: http://grokbase.com/t/gg/firebase-talk/154mr25k86/firebase-mobile-app-future-proofing-strategies-for-handing-schema-evolution http://grokbase.com/t/gg/firebase-talk/154mr25k86/firebase-m... That thread is not encouraging. Edit - found the original thread here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/LjHATl8_XBs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/LjHATl...
  - shiny 10y ago
    I worked for a company that relied solely on Firebase for their backend... I ended up writing a lot of Node scripts to munge our Firebase db's data and JSON structure.
skrebbel 10y ago
As a current Firebase customer, I'm pretty thrilled about all this (especially since I was afraid Google would pull a Facebook here). However, there's quite a bunch of API changes and absolutely no info about how long the old JS library, endpoints, etc etc are to keep working. Should I get stressed out?
- jwngr 10y ago
  (Firebase engineer here) The old SDKs will continue to work! We worked extremely hard to make sure everything was backwards compatible with them. We most certainly do not want to break any existing customer apps. Check out the migration guides [1] to get your app updated to the new SDKs. We understand migrating is not easy or always convenient. If you run into issues or something that used to work seems to be no longer work, please let us know. We will be giving you advanced warning if and when things get turned off. [1] http://firebase.google.com/support/guides http://firebase.google.com/support/guides
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    Great! I found the guides but I couldn't find this info in there. I like the new features and also the new JS API so I think that's plenty of incentive to migrate. Thanks!
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    Thanks for the info! Hopping on this thread to ask one more question: does the JS API now support syncing even through going offline, like the iOS and Android SDKs do?
  - jis 10y ago
    We are using "Custom" authentication where we issue tokens based on a stored application secret. Is this still supported? I cannot find it in the documentation.
intellegacy 10y ago
Is there a tutorial that explains how to setup a backend for user-taken videos? for an IOS app one thing I liked about Parse was that it's documentation was newbie-friendly.
- hbhakhra 10y ago
  I've used firebase for other apps but not video storage. From what I've read about how it works, its better to store the media in some 3rd party system such as S3 and keep the link to the file in firebase. Here is one good thread I found with a little searching: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-angular/xb2besi__lU/1MyHJfwCerUJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-angular/xb2be...
  - mbleigh 10y ago
    Firebase Storage launched today and is perfect for things like storing video! https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/ https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/
oceankid 10y ago
The thought of reliable, managed hosting is interesting. But how does one extend an app outside storing and fetching data? What if you want to run a background job to send emails, parse a complex csv or create a custom pdf and write to firebase storage?
- mbleigh 10y ago
  Firebase projects are deeply integrated with Google Cloud, so you can spin up backend resources such as Google Cloud Functions, App Engine, and Compute Engine. Using the Node.js server SDK you can watch for changes in the Firebase Database and act on them. We're thoughtfully considering more holistic ways we can help here.
1cb134b57283 10y ago
As a server engineer already having trouble finding a new job, how worried should I be about this?
sebivaduva 10y ago
for all of you looking for a real-time api platform that's open source and not owned by a cloud giant come join us build telepat.io
robotnoises 10y ago
Not expressly mentioned anywhere that I've seen: the Free plan now includes custom domains + SSL cert. Under the previous firebase.com, that was $5 a month. Sounds good to me!
aj0strow 10y ago
I've had only good experiences with firebase. They added an HTTP api, web hosting, multiple security rule preprocessors (pain point), and got faster and cheaper. Yeah only good things.
ssijak 10y ago
What is the state of AngularFire library, there are no guides for angular in the new documentation? And when will the angularfire for angular2 be ready to use?
- jamest 10y ago
  We launched AngularFire2 into beta at ng-conf earlier this month: https://github.com/angular/angularfire2 https://github.com/angular/angularfire2
fahrradflucht 10y ago
I have build apps with firebase in the past and the feature I missed the most was performing scheduled tasks on the database. Now we are getting this BIG app platform update and this feature is still not in there. AWS Lambda with Scheduled Events for a long time to come :sad-panda:
- subpixel 10y ago
  Do Google Cloud Functions (referenced above) not fit that bill? https://cloud.google.com/functions/ https://cloud.google.com/functions/ I'm also keen to use Firebase without having to run a separate server to handle logic for payments, email alerts on search terms, etc.
  - fahrradflucht 10y ago
    Last time I checked it was impossible to do scheduled tasks. But it's in alpha stage, so maybe that's coming.
- hornbaker 10y ago
  Big +1 from me, as I'm working on a large Web app with Firebase and continually hit blocks where I need server logic/events. Read the announcement full of hope, then felt let down. What's the point of BaaS if you still need another B to power it?
welanes 10y ago
FYI, new docs on data structure mention rooms, which was an example in the old docs. Should read messages or conversations: https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/structure-data#flatten_data_structures https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/structure-data...
Philipp__ 10y ago
It looks like it is here to stay... But that surprise Parse shutdown will leave me asking, what if...
pier25 10y ago
So how would one address server side logic? Like for example doing something with the data before sending it to the client?
- angryasian 10y ago
  I think this is the biggest issue with firebase that I can't find an answer to. It seems everyone is ok with just doing everything on the client side. Schema changes, business logic, etc.
  - pier25 10y ago
    From what I've seen, all backend duties are implemented in a server acting as another client to Firebase. Usually a Node server since Firebase has provided a JS SDK from the start, but I've seen implementations in all major languages. You either implement some cron task in that server that periodically makes stuff with Firebase, or you use an endpoint in Firebase and use it a task queue for the server. I'd would be great if someone with more experience could provide more info on how these backend duties are performed. Edit: see this for more info https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/r4d5H7ffsZM https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/r4d5H7...
wiradikusuma 10y ago
For Firebase/Google Cloud Platform engineer: does it mean Google Cloud Endpoints is being phased out? if i'm already using Google Cloud Endpoints, should i move to Firebase? what's the advantage?
- oaktowner 10y ago
  Hi -- PM for Endpoints here. Endpoints is going strong and will have a release later this year that adds support for hosting APIs on more of our compute offerings (Compute Engine, Container Engine, App Engine Flexible Environments). We'll also be adding features, reporting, etc.
  - wiradikusuma 10y ago
    thanks! I just feel Endpoints doesn't get enough love from Google. It works nicely, but with minimum feature compared to Firebase (which I don't mind, let it be boring as long as it's not deprecated)
tszming 10y ago
The biggest problem with any Google cloud services nowadays is you don't know if it was/will blocked in China, of course it is okay if you don't care the users in China.
dudus 10y ago
Even if you don't want to use any Firebase service you might still want to use it only for Analytics. Drop the firebase SDK in the App and you are done. Free, unlimited and unsampled Analytics reports for your App. https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/#implementation_path https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/#implementation_p... https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6317517?hl=en&ref_topic=6317489 https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6317517?hl=en&ref...
ddxv 10y ago
This appears to just be a way to limit the growth of third party tracking which threaten Google by encouraging user acquisition from many sources. I say this because they dont specifically say they will postback events to advertising networks other than Google's.
blairanderson 10y ago
From my experience with the new API, it's a little less intuitive and worse documentation. I think it's rad that Google invested a ton of resources into firebase. we have been super successful with firebase, and are proponents of using it as a notification system and less of a datastore. That would be easy, but unwise. Use it to notify clients of changes so they can fetch data. Read from Firebase, write to your own server/DB.
albeva 10y ago
I think services like firebase are a very scary thing. Too much dependence on one vendor, too much black box magic, too much logic that is beyond control. And services like this contribute to general dumbing down of software developers. We're heading towards world of script kiddies where html and js rule and all complex logic is handled and controlled by service providers. Is it a good thing? You can deliver fast, but in the long term is it worth it?
dmitriz 10y ago
Is user email confirmation finally supported by Firebase? Last time I checked it wasn't.
- alfongj 10y ago
  Hi dmitriz! Yes. We have it (currently in iOS and Web, soon on Android), and we're eager to get feedback and work to improve it! If you try it out, ping me at alfongj at google dot com and let me know what you think!
eva1984 10y ago
Feel like the new Wordpress/Drupal/CMS, just in App space.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mcv 10y ago
I intend to use Firebase as at least a temporary backend while developing my app. Maybe I'll move to a real server later, but during development it's really easy to just have some place you can shoot json at. And I can always add interaction later by having some other application listen to it. I don't really need the actual realtime communication stuff all that much (though it might turn out to be useful), but just a lightweight place to store json is really useful.

530 points by Nemant 10y ago

This may be a stupid question, but: What do you use it for? Cannot everyone basically edit the client code and do whatever with your data? I've only used Firebase for prototyping.

Diamons 10y ago
I use Firebase in lieu of running my own NodeJS server. I can use a backend PHP web server but still provide realtime capabilities to my app users by using Firebase as a pub/sub system.
plexicle 10y ago
Authentication is built-in. You can authenticate users and give them specific access with a JSON-like file that lives on the server. It actually works wonderfully.
- atom-morgan 10y ago
  So if someone were switching from Mongo/Mongoose to Firebase, what's the biggest difference?
struct 10y ago
The realtime database is IMO very cool and it's definitely worth it just for that, but integrated analytics and cloud notifications takes it to the next level.
- mayop100 10y ago
  We hope you'll give the new features a try and let us know what you think!
welanes 10y ago
I use it for its main selling point: a realtime backend. With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. As for security - the Firebase security rules and server side authentication allow you to lock things down.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. > It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. You can get the same if you use other tools. The realtime stuff is the only big thing they do most other projects don’t, and even for that there are currently several quite well working implementations out there.
  - welanes 10y ago
    Sure. But now I have all this in one service. And when that pet project moves from web to a native app, Firebase has all the trappings to make it easy. A lot of eggs in one basket admittedly, but that basket looks pretty robust for now.
jwngr 10y ago
That's what the Database Security Rules [1] are for. If you want to learn more, check out my I/O talk tomorrow called "The key to Firebase security" [2]. [1] http://firebase.google.com/docs/database/security http://firebase.google.com/docs/database/security [2] https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=af641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=af641ff7-0bef-...

mayop100 10y ago

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote configuration, updates to auth, etc. Perhaps more important though are the new solutions for later in your app’s lifecycle. We’ve added analytics, crash reporting, dynamic linking, and a bunch more so that we can continue to support you after you’ve built and launched your app too. I'd suggest reading the blog post for more info: https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/05/firebase-expands-to-become-unified-app-platform.html https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/05/firebase-expands-to-... This is the first cut of a lot of new features, and we’re eager to hear what the Hacker News community thinks. I look forward to your comments!

_kyran 10y ago
Looks great! It will certainly be filling the void that Parse's departue left. Google already offered a lot more more than other platforms (ios) in terms of analytics and this just makes that gap even bigger.
plexicle 10y ago
Hello there. I love Firebase. Use it every day. The one big request I've always had was to be able to grab the client's IP address on request. Is that possible with this new Firebase and GCE integration? I have many Firebase apps. Most of them have an intermediate server solely for this one reason.
- mayop100 10y ago
  This isn't something we support out of the box yet, but I'll definitely discuss this with the team. Thanks for the feedback!
- velohx 10y ago
  That's a feature I would also really like. I also use an intermediate server (ipify.org) to get the IP address. The only reason I need the IP address is to throttle users. If adjustable throttling was baked into the platform and not require me to write logic to handle it, that would be sweet too.

fredthedinosaur 10y ago

When will it support a count query? now to be able to count number of children I have to download all the data. Count is such an important feature for me.

vinaybn 10y ago
You could run your writes as transactions that increments a count wherever you need one.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bwship 10y ago

We've been using the Firebase platform for a while now. It's pretty cool to see them expand from 3 products to ~15 overnight. I'm most excited about their analytics and crash reporting. I must say that their system has been one of the best we have used in a longtime, I am really excited to see other aspects like analytics and ads being housed under this same umbrella, as I think it is going to help with development time overall. One area that I'd like to see improved though is a deeper querying language for database, or even better would be a way to automatically export the system in realtime to a postgres database for better SQL type analytics.

WalterSear 10y ago

I'm in talks with a company regarding building an application for users in developing countries, where Android 2.0 is still the dominant OS version. Firebase 2.0 looks like a great fit for their needs otherwise, but is the new sdk backward compatible to Android 2.0?

ivolo 10y ago

We used the original Firebase database product to build http://socrates.io/ http://socrates.io/ 3.5 years ago, and I remember getting Socrates running in a few hours. I’m looking forward to seeing them up the bar on speed of development / ease for their next 10 products :) Nice work team!

mybigsword 10y ago

way too risky to use it for startups. Google may discontinue this project at any time and you have to spend months to rewrite everything for another database. IF google open source it and we will be able to install it on premise and patch without Google, that would be ok. So, I would recommend to use PostgreSQL instead.

lukeholder 10y ago
Recommend looking at Rethinkdb :) They just announced Horizon too.
- mybigsword 10y ago
  Yes, this may be a good option. I just never tried it or worked with it, so I can't say anything about it.
WalterSear 10y ago
Google is dogfooding this in it's other companies, like Nest, fwiw.
- edko 10y ago
  Well, yes, but if they decide to discontinue the service, or increase the price, this is no guarantee that all other users will get the same treatment as Alphabet companies.
- jfoster 10y ago
  They always say that. Google's internal customers also get to continue access after a product has "been retired" (eg. Chrome Web Store still using Google Wallet's web payments) and are in a different position than Google's external customers when it comes to negotiability and notification period.
marknutter 10y ago
Way to risky not to use for startups, IMO. What would you prefer, spending half your time doing backend development to get a system that might be 80% as reliable as Firebase on the off chance that your startup will survive long enough for your custom engineered solution to bare fruit, or spending all your time actually building your product and launching quickly so you can determine whether or not your startup is even viable?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Blixz 10y ago

So, Still no offline persistence for JS. What a huge disappointment.

EuAndreh 10y ago
Yep, no way close to PouchDB.
pier25 10y ago
Are you sure? They seem to advertise offline persistence for both mobile and web. https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/#key_functions https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/#key_functions
mbleigh 10y ago
Check out my I/O talk on Friday (Progressive Web Apps on Firebase). While the Firebase Web SDK doesn't support persistent offline just yet, we do have some new ways to get the job done. https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?filters=Firebase&sid=ff641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7#day3/ff641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?filters=Firebase&s...
- pier25 10y ago
  Um... what about this? https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/offline-capabilities#section-presence https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/offline-capabi...
  - mbleigh 10y ago
    The Firebase JS SDK currently supports non-persistent offline. So long as you keep the tab open, Firebase works great offline! However, if you go offline and then try to refresh the content, none of it will be persistently stored or accessible until you go back online.
    - pier25 10y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. I was hoping to use Firebase on a React Native app but I do need persistence. Do you have or plan to make some wrapper of the native iOS/Android SDKs for React Native?

zammitjames 10y ago

We were part of the Early Access Program for the expanded Firebase and used it to build our music collaboration app Kwaver. With the new features, they did a nice job of collecting a bunch of related mobile products (Analytics, Push Notifications, Storage, Authentication, Database, Deep Linking, etc) into a pretty cohesive platform, and it's saved us a bunch of time. With Firebase Analytics we can track events, segment audiences (according to user properties; active, dormant, inactive) and take action according to the user segment. We are able to send push notifications (also using Firebase) to dormant male users who play the piano for example. Another cool feature is Remote Config, which gives you the option to ship a number of separate experiences and track the user interaction. Like A/B Testing but way more flexible. For us, the best product is the existing database product they had, as it really improves our user experience to ditch the 'pull to refresh' button' and have our app respond to changes live. We have been waiting for Google to provide developers a more complete mobile solution for a while now, and they’ve done it superbly through Firebase! Feedback; It would be really cool if Firebase could implement UTM codes to be able to track user acquisition and be able to automate actions according to User Properties. Shameless plug: if you're a musician (or a music fan), we'd really appreciate if you could download our music collaboration app, try it out and give us feedback. It’s available for free on the app store; The following link will re-direct you there later today. http://kwaver.com http://kwaver.com

themihai 10y ago

"... and earn more money." Is this really necessary on the homepage? Sounds like a old misleading spam page

primitivesuave 10y ago

Firebase is an incredibly powerful tool, and in a sense is a "democratizing force" in web development. Now anyone can build a complete web application without needing to know anything about setting up servers, content delivery networks, AWS (which is still quite difficult to use), and scaling. I teach kids as young as 10 years old to build iOS apps and websites with Firebase - they can develop locally and push to Firebase hosting with a single command. After exploring this new update, I can say with confidence that literally everything is easy-to-use now. Whenever there is a Firebase announcement there are many replies along the lines of "this won't work for me because it's owned by Google, may be discontinued, doesn't have on-premise solution, etc". If these are your thoughts then you are missing the point of Firebase. It enables small web development shops like mine to focus on building beautiful web applications without having to give up manpower toward backend engineering. The cost of using Firebase is peanuts compared to the savings in employee hours. Perhaps some day we will have to migrate elsewhere, but I find that possibility extremely unlikely because the clear amount of effort it took to create the Google-y version means this is a long-term play.

samastur 10y ago
We are not missing the point. Some of us just happen to value other things more than convenience. There's no shortage of discontinued products that were cancelled even though a lot of effort and money was poured into them. Amount previously invested is a sunk cost and shouldn't even matter when deciding if continue a service/product or not. Just because you have already dig a hole doesn't mean you should keep digging even though you can't profit from it.
- primitivesuave 10y ago
  This is a good point. However, products are usually discontinued because they no longer fit in with the core business of the acquirer. In this case, Google is making a clear statement that Firebase will be an integral part of the Google Cloud experience for everyone (hobbyists all the way to apps at scale).
- iofj 10y ago
  > sunk cost and shouldn't even matter Shouldn't but does. It has it's own fallacy section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_t... Also, not falling for the fallacy means admitting defeat. And the higher up one is in an organization, the worse admitting defeat is for your career. Having a product dead-ended by keeping on working on it forever is much better for manager/government official careers. So sadly, the fact that other people (above you) fall for the fallacy makes falling for it yourself rational in a lot of cases. Instead just systematically lower the priority, but never to zero. In anything but a startup, I would treat any sunk cost above a minimal level as a firm commitment to continue at any cost. I would never have done so 5 years ago, but ...

kawera 10y ago

Question: Would Firebase be a good option where the desktop/web app is the main access point, mobile been secondary (around 3:1) ?

mayop100 10y ago
Most likely, yes. Everything we have for mobile web works just as well for desktop web too.

Kiro 10y ago

I'm building a simple web app where I want signed in users to be able to add a JSON object to a database and then list all JSON objects publicly. Only the user who created the object should be able to edit it. Is this a good use-case for Firebase or should I look into something else?

espeed 10y ago
yes, Firebase allows you to isolate user data, and it has built-in auth API.

timjver 10y ago

I love Firebase, but the Swift code in the iOS guide is of really low quality. For example (https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/ios/save-data#delete_data https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/ios/save-data#dele...): if currentData.value != nil, let uid = FIRAuth.auth()?.currentUser?.uid { var post = currentData.value as! [String : AnyObject] var stars : Dictionary<String, Bool> stars = post["stars"] as? Dictionary<String, Bool> ?? [:] // ... } What this should really be: guard let post = currentData.value as? [String : AnyObject], uid = FIRAuth.auth()?.currentUser?.uid else { return FIRTransactionResult.successWithValue(currentData) } let stars = post["stars"] as? [String : Bool] ?? [:] // ... }

ianbarber 10y ago
Great suggestion! Pull requests welcome as well if you have time: https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-ios/blob/master/database/DatabaseExampleSwift/PostTableViewCell.swift#L50 https://github.com/firebase/quickstart-ios/blob/master/datab...
- timjver 10y ago
  Oh cool, I already sent feedback through the Firebase website but I'll do this as well.

chatmasta 10y ago

Interesting that Google is doubling down where Facebook divested. The obvious difference is that Google has a cloud platform and Firebase is a funnel into it, whereas Facebook had nothing to funnel Parse users into. I wonder if Facebook will ever launch a cloud platform. They've got the computing resources for it.

csmajorfive 10y ago
They probably won't.
ryanobjc 10y ago
Your first hint that Google was very serious about cloud, was when we hired Diane Greene: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hires-diane-greene-to-run-cloud-2015-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hires-diane-greene-to-... Also when Urs publically states he wants Google Cloud revenue to be bigger than adwords, that ain't nothing: http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-beat-search-2015-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-... I know it's popular to be cynical about Google and how we'll deprecate everything just as it's popular, but that kind of cynicism isn't really good for your health.

robotnoises 10y ago

I don't think it was explicitly mentioned in the keynote, but it looks like they updated pricing: https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ https://firebase.google.com/pricing/ Can't find the old pricing now, but it seems similar, but with less plan types.

mayop100 10y ago
Yes! We updated our pricing. We have fewer plan types (just 3 now), and now have a pay-as-you-go plan which is designed for maximum flexibility. This pricing is cheaper for almost every developer.
- robotnoises 10y ago
  Oh sweet, I just noticed that under the new pricing, the free plan includes a custom domain and ssl cert. This was literally the only reason I updated one of my legacy hobby apps to the old Spark ($5 per month for the uninitiated).
pritambarhate 10y ago
Here is one third party link I found which still shows old pricing: https://www.g2crowd.com/products/firebase/pricing https://www.g2crowd.com/products/firebase/pricing If this link is correct the new plans have a changed a bit, but pricing per GB seems to be more or less the same. A few dollars here and there. But this shows that the plans can and will change. Smaller services like Compose.io (https://www.compose.io/pricing/ https://www.compose.io/pricing/) and mLab (https://mlab.com/plans/pricing/ https://mlab.com/plans/pricing/) seem to be charging around USD 15-18 per GB of DB for MongoDB. So either Firebase is less resource hungry for Google or Google's scale is allowing them to reap better efficiency or Google is subsidising Firebase and giving it almost at cost.

choward 10y ago

Provide a self hosting option or GTFO.

milesward 10y ago
https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon

gcatalfamo 10y ago

Can somebody explain the new Firebase reframing towards GCP? Maybe with another provider analogy? (e.g.,Firebase is to GCP like Parse is(was) to Facebook)

inlined 10y ago
I cover this briefly in my talk today: "Migrate to Firebase" [1]. Google Cloud Platform gives you massively scalable & robust building blocks at the IaaS and PaaS level. You can use these to do just about anything as long as you have the time and expertise. Combining building blocks to follow best practices isn't always trivial, so Firebase offers the next layer higher in the stack. With Firebase you can mix and match pieces that integrate together to be a turn-key backend. We also offer additional services to help you make your app successful once it's been built. Firebase and Google Cloud Platform play nicely together and we've made sure you can mix and match the pieces you need. E.g. Firebase Storage lets you use Firebase Rules to secure Google Cloud Storage. The new server-side APIs for Firebase are authenticated with the Google's IAM policies. The two teams are partners and we're excited to be working together. 1. https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=b4641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7#day1/b4641ff7-0bef-e511-a517-00155d5066d7 https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=b4641ff7-0bef-...
- gcatalfamo 10y ago
  This is great! thank you!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

joeblau 10y ago

I remember walking into Firebase's offices about 4 years ago when it was 4 people on Townsend St in SOMA in a 300 square foot share office space. It's amazing to see how far they've come; Congrats to the whole team.

mayop100 10y ago
Thanks Joe! : ) I remember that day.

davidkhess 10y ago

The concern I've always had with Firebase is the lack of a business logic layer between clients and the database. This tends to force the business logic into the clients themselves. Trying to change the schema if you have Firebase clients deployed that can't be instantly upgraded via a browser refresh (i.e. iOS and Android mobile apps) seems an extremely challenging task.

atom-morgan 10y ago
> Trying to change the schema That's the biggest question I have after looking over the site. Coming from the Mongo/Mongoose world what happens in this case?
- davidkhess 10y ago
  There used to be a thread in the Firebase Google group about this which is gone now. It still lives on here: http://grokbase.com/t/gg/firebase-talk/154mr25k86/firebase-mobile-app-future-proofing-strategies-for-handing-schema-evolution http://grokbase.com/t/gg/firebase-talk/154mr25k86/firebase-m... That thread is not encouraging. Edit - found the original thread here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/LjHATl8_XBs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/LjHATl...
- shiny 10y ago
  I worked for a company that relied solely on Firebase for their backend... I ended up writing a lot of Node scripts to munge our Firebase db's data and JSON structure.

skrebbel 10y ago

As a current Firebase customer, I'm pretty thrilled about all this (especially since I was afraid Google would pull a Facebook here). However, there's quite a bunch of API changes and absolutely no info about how long the old JS library, endpoints, etc etc are to keep working. Should I get stressed out?

jwngr 10y ago
(Firebase engineer here) The old SDKs will continue to work! We worked extremely hard to make sure everything was backwards compatible with them. We most certainly do not want to break any existing customer apps. Check out the migration guides [1] to get your app updated to the new SDKs. We understand migrating is not easy or always convenient. If you run into issues or something that used to work seems to be no longer work, please let us know. We will be giving you advanced warning if and when things get turned off. [1] http://firebase.google.com/support/guides http://firebase.google.com/support/guides
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Great! I found the guides but I couldn't find this info in there. I like the new features and also the new JS API so I think that's plenty of incentive to migrate. Thanks!
- karmelapple 10y ago
  Thanks for the info! Hopping on this thread to ask one more question: does the JS API now support syncing even through going offline, like the iOS and Android SDKs do?
- jis 10y ago
  We are using "Custom" authentication where we issue tokens based on a stored application secret. Is this still supported? I cannot find it in the documentation.

intellegacy 10y ago

Is there a tutorial that explains how to setup a backend for user-taken videos? for an IOS app one thing I liked about Parse was that it's documentation was newbie-friendly.

hbhakhra 10y ago
I've used firebase for other apps but not video storage. From what I've read about how it works, its better to store the media in some 3rd party system such as S3 and keep the link to the file in firebase. Here is one good thread I found with a little searching: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-angular/xb2besi__lU/1MyHJfwCerUJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/firebase-angular/xb2be...
- mbleigh 10y ago
  Firebase Storage launched today and is perfect for things like storing video! https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/ https://firebase.google.com/docs/storage/

oceankid 10y ago

The thought of reliable, managed hosting is interesting. But how does one extend an app outside storing and fetching data? What if you want to run a background job to send emails, parse a complex csv or create a custom pdf and write to firebase storage?

mbleigh 10y ago
Firebase projects are deeply integrated with Google Cloud, so you can spin up backend resources such as Google Cloud Functions, App Engine, and Compute Engine. Using the Node.js server SDK you can watch for changes in the Firebase Database and act on them. We're thoughtfully considering more holistic ways we can help here.

1cb134b57283 10y ago

As a server engineer already having trouble finding a new job, how worried should I be about this?

sebivaduva 10y ago

for all of you looking for a real-time api platform that's open source and not owned by a cloud giant come join us build telepat.io

robotnoises 10y ago

Not expressly mentioned anywhere that I've seen: the Free plan now includes custom domains + SSL cert. Under the previous firebase.com, that was $5 a month. Sounds good to me!

aj0strow 10y ago

I've had only good experiences with firebase. They added an HTTP api, web hosting, multiple security rule preprocessors (pain point), and got faster and cheaper. Yeah only good things.

ssijak 10y ago

What is the state of AngularFire library, there are no guides for angular in the new documentation? And when will the angularfire for angular2 be ready to use?

jamest 10y ago
We launched AngularFire2 into beta at ng-conf earlier this month: https://github.com/angular/angularfire2 https://github.com/angular/angularfire2

fahrradflucht 10y ago

I have build apps with firebase in the past and the feature I missed the most was performing scheduled tasks on the database. Now we are getting this BIG app platform update and this feature is still not in there. AWS Lambda with Scheduled Events for a long time to come :sad-panda:

subpixel 10y ago
Do Google Cloud Functions (referenced above) not fit that bill? https://cloud.google.com/functions/ https://cloud.google.com/functions/ I'm also keen to use Firebase without having to run a separate server to handle logic for payments, email alerts on search terms, etc.
- fahrradflucht 10y ago
  Last time I checked it was impossible to do scheduled tasks. But it's in alpha stage, so maybe that's coming.
hornbaker 10y ago
Big +1 from me, as I'm working on a large Web app with Firebase and continually hit blocks where I need server logic/events. Read the announcement full of hope, then felt let down. What's the point of BaaS if you still need another B to power it?

welanes 10y ago

FYI, new docs on data structure mention rooms, which was an example in the old docs. Should read messages or conversations: https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/structure-data#flatten_data_structures https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/structure-data...

Philipp__ 10y ago

It looks like it is here to stay... But that surprise Parse shutdown will leave me asking, what if...

pier25 10y ago

So how would one address server side logic? Like for example doing something with the data before sending it to the client?

angryasian 10y ago
I think this is the biggest issue with firebase that I can't find an answer to. It seems everyone is ok with just doing everything on the client side. Schema changes, business logic, etc.
- pier25 10y ago
  From what I've seen, all backend duties are implemented in a server acting as another client to Firebase. Usually a Node server since Firebase has provided a JS SDK from the start, but I've seen implementations in all major languages. You either implement some cron task in that server that periodically makes stuff with Firebase, or you use an endpoint in Firebase and use it a task queue for the server. I'd would be great if someone with more experience could provide more info on how these backend duties are performed. Edit: see this for more info https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/r4d5H7ffsZM https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/r4d5H7...

wiradikusuma 10y ago

For Firebase/Google Cloud Platform engineer: does it mean Google Cloud Endpoints is being phased out? if i'm already using Google Cloud Endpoints, should i move to Firebase? what's the advantage?

oaktowner 10y ago
Hi -- PM for Endpoints here. Endpoints is going strong and will have a release later this year that adds support for hosting APIs on more of our compute offerings (Compute Engine, Container Engine, App Engine Flexible Environments). We'll also be adding features, reporting, etc.
- wiradikusuma 10y ago
  thanks! I just feel Endpoints doesn't get enough love from Google. It works nicely, but with minimum feature compared to Firebase (which I don't mind, let it be boring as long as it's not deprecated)

tszming 10y ago

The biggest problem with any Google cloud services nowadays is you don't know if it was/will blocked in China, of course it is okay if you don't care the users in China.

dudus 10y ago

Even if you don't want to use any Firebase service you might still want to use it only for Analytics. Drop the firebase SDK in the App and you are done. Free, unlimited and unsampled Analytics reports for your App. https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/#implementation_path https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/#implementation_p... https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6317517?hl=en&ref_topic=6317489 https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6317517?hl=en&ref...

ddxv 10y ago

This appears to just be a way to limit the growth of third party tracking which threaten Google by encouraging user acquisition from many sources. I say this because they dont specifically say they will postback events to advertising networks other than Google's.

blairanderson 10y ago

From my experience with the new API, it's a little less intuitive and worse documentation. I think it's rad that Google invested a ton of resources into firebase. we have been super successful with firebase, and are proponents of using it as a notification system and less of a datastore. That would be easy, but unwise. Use it to notify clients of changes so they can fetch data. Read from Firebase, write to your own server/DB.

albeva 10y ago

I think services like firebase are a very scary thing. Too much dependence on one vendor, too much black box magic, too much logic that is beyond control. And services like this contribute to general dumbing down of software developers. We're heading towards world of script kiddies where html and js rule and all complex logic is handled and controlled by service providers. Is it a good thing? You can deliver fast, but in the long term is it worth it?

dmitriz 10y ago

Is user email confirmation finally supported by Firebase? Last time I checked it wasn't.

alfongj 10y ago
Hi dmitriz! Yes. We have it (currently in iOS and Web, soon on Android), and we're eager to get feedback and work to improve it! If you try it out, ping me at alfongj at google dot com and let me know what you think!

eva1984 10y ago

Feel like the new Wordpress/Drupal/CMS, just in App space.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mcv 10y ago

I intend to use Firebase as at least a temporary backend while developing my app. Maybe I'll move to a real server later, but during development it's really easy to just have some place you can shoot json at. And I can always add interaction later by having some other application listen to it. I don't really need the actual realtime communication stuff all that much (though it might turn out to be useful), but just a lightweight place to store json is really useful.