Firebase beyond push notifications

Kako Botasso
Aug 25, 2017 · 5 min read

When I first met Firebase was for send push notifications to Android apps. But actually, I never used for this purpose. Firebase has many other awesome features like Crash Reporting, Real Time Database, Storage and others. I’ll talk a little about my experience with some of these features.

Firebase Crash Reporting

When I launch my first app, I was thinking in send push notifications to my users but I realized that it can be done inside the app. So I move forward, put it on Play Store and ask my parents to download. When my father launch my app, it crashed. I spent almost 3 days looking for error logs, to finally realize that errors would be reported into Google Play Console, after some days that they happened.

At this time, I was a web developer, working with Ruby on Rails, and using Airbrake to see application errors almost in real time, and 3 days to see errors from my Android app was too much time. Because of this, I started using Firebase.

In the 1.0.1 version from my app, I added Firebase Crash Report to get more information about errors, and, most important, get this information faster. After that version, all new errors that I saw into Crash Report Dashboard, I solved and send to Play Store a fix version almost in the same day.

I was fine and happy with my app, I launched a game app and used a lot this Firebase feature. But I had another problem, now with my personal website, and used another service from Firebase to solve it.

Firebase Hosting

I used to had an PHP Hosting for my personal website and I needed to make a new plan to continue using this hosting. I had just on single page that I really use PHP, the others I just use the include function, so I decided to leave it and start using a, new for me, Firebase feature, the Hosting.

As I had to change some pages, delete PHP pages and put everything on HTML, I decided to make a new one. I took a template, made some changes and in a couple of days, the new website was finished.

Deploy it to Firebase Hosting is sweet and simple, like a git push, and after almost 3 minutes, my website was in Firebase Server and with more 2 minutes of fun into Console, I configured my own domain, make the things even more beautiful.

But that's not good yet…

Firebase Database

In my old website, when someone tried to talk to me using contact form, it was sent to my personal email and I answered it. If, for any reason, the email wasn’t delivered to me, I lost these information.

To solve this problem, I started using Firebase Database to save this information and see it on Console. When I was testing this, I realized that it can be used in other parts of website. I decided to add some information into Console and load them into it.

After doing this, I added all the informations that I wanted in a very simple way in 5 minutes. It worked almost perfect. How about the images?

Firebase Storage

Now with my website loading information from database, I decided to use other awesome function, the Firebase Storage. I uploaded all images from my website that wasn’t part of layout into it, and get all the URLs. After it, I updated my database with these and also my website to load it correctly and then, made another deploy to upload the changes. Sweet and beautiful.

After all these changes, I finally ok with my personal website. Now, the informations are very simple to add on Firebase Console and I immediately see it on web without need of any new deploys. Now I make deploys only to fix some bugs.

The last time I had to add a new job that I made, I was so lazy that I didn’t want to open the Console and add the informations needed. So I decided to create a little Javascript application with an interface to help me add these informations and see data from people that want to talk to me.

Firebase Authentication

I started this interface creating options to see the contacts made on website, reading it from database and showing it on the screen. The big problem was that it was open to everybody, that’s why I started using Firebase Authentication.

In Auth, I chose that I want a simple authentication with email and password, created a pair of them and it's done. After, I integrated it on my interface and now, to access the informations in there, I have to log in, and all user access I can control into Console. Awesome!

Firebase Features

Firebase has many features that I want to try in a near future, like Remote Config, Test Lab and Dynamic Links, but at this moment, my website is loading information from database and I'm trying to finish an interface to make easier to add new jobs, new posts and upload photos to it.

Hope this article have helped and hope see you soon. If you have any doubt, don’t be afraid to ask in the comments. If you liked it, recommend and share :D

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