Flamelink.io, the Firebase CMS at #FirebaseSummit 2022
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the recording of the Firebase Summit 2022.
Also, if you want to know more about Flamelink.io, the Firebase CMS, check out our Explainer Video or Flamelink.io for more.
For the first time in 3 years it was great to have an in-person Firebase Summit, held in New York City at the amazing Pier 57 on 18 October 2022.
We started off with coffee and there was a real buzz amongst the attendees (but that’s always the case with the Firebase community — and not JUST because of the coffee). Firebase outdid themselves with their coffee station ‘Firebase Roasting’ (like Firebase Hosting) and as someone who loves coffee, puns and Firebase, the names of these creations gave me a good chuckle.
Can you believe 2022 is the 7th edition of the annual Firebase Summit. At Flamelink, we’ve been a part of every Firebase Summit since 2017 — that’s 6 for those keeping score: (in-person in 2017 in Amsterdam, 2018 in Prague, & 2019 in Madrid, online in 2020 and 2021 and with some of our team following online and attending in-person).
The Firebase team are huge proponents for apps built by the community that improve the way people live, work, and learn and they’re committed to delivering flexible, integrated solutions so that dev & engineering teams can continue to build the apps their users love. The Flamelink team LOVES Firebase and the huge value they add to the lives of Dev and Engineering teams the world over.
As always, the Firebase team kicks off Firebase Summit with all of the big announcements and features coming out of the Lab in the Keynote Address. There are also Talks and Expert-lead classes throughout the day, and not to mention the opportunity to hang out with other Firebase Devs in the community in and between sessions.
So, let’s get into the announcements…
APP DEVELOPMENT: ACCELERATED
Deploy Your Modern Web Apps Quicker With Firebase Hosting
Firebase Hosting lets you easily build and deploy websites globally without managing any infrastructure, with built-in security and a streamlined developer experience.
With today’s update, Firebase Hosting goes beyond static websites, making it possible to easily deploy dynamic web frameworks, such as Next.js and Angular Universal. Devs can deploy all these frameworks with the same single CLI command (firebase deploy) already in use. The Firebase CLI automagically detects the framework being used, runs the build, generates the Cloud Function when required, sets up any configuration you might need, and handles the entire deployment.
Just. Like. That.
Also available is added support for client-side builds using frameworks like Vite, Preact, Lit, and Svelte.
Less time worrying about backend backend nitty-gritty, more time building the apps that your users love.
Download the latest version of the Firebase CLI to give it a whirl using firebase experiments:enablewebframeworks.
Spend Less Time Managing Your Database With Firestore
There are three important updates announced to Cloud Firestore to help manage and query your database.
[Developer Preview] Count() function: With the new count function in Firstore, you can now get the count of the matching documents when you run a query or read from a collection, without loading the actual documents, which saves you a lot of time.
[General Availability] Scalable BaaS: Improvement to Firestore’s core capability to handle database writes and connections without hard limits, making it easier to scale and support your app’s growth through large traffic spikes.
[General Availability] Time to live (TTL): Specify a field in your documents that determines the lifetime of that doc. Firestore then deletes each document once it’s expired, so you no longer have to spend time managing data retention policies and you can save on storage costs.
Learn more from the Firestore docs.
Protect Your Users & Data with Authentication & Security Rules
Firebase Authentication is an end-to-end identity solution that makes signing in and managing users easy by safeguarding user data & protecting customers’ privacy.
New Authentication features, in partnership with Google Cloud Identity Platform, were announced today:.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) helps safeguard user accounts, even if their password is compromised.
- Support for the OpenID Connect standard and SAML, so you can use a wide range of sign-in methods, like Slack and Discord, without waiting for custom integrations.
- Blocking Functions to help create custom requirements for signing in or signing up.
- Full audit and activity logging added to Authentication to ensure all auth settings changes are auditable and offer you the insight into your Authentication usage
Upgrade your Firebase Authentication instance in the Firebase Console today to test drive these features.
There’s also been an update to the Security Rules in Cloud Storage for Firebase to support cross server requests, ensuring each user only has access to their own data. This new functionality allows you to build flexible permissions to protect access to storage files based on data within Firestore.
Browse and Find Relevant and Powerful Extensions for Your Project with the New Extension Marketplace
This is something that’s gotten A lOT of folks pretty excited on-the-line.
Firebase Extensions (that have existed for a while already) are pre-packaged bundles of code making it easy to add core features to your app from Google (and other trusted companies) with minimal code and without learning different third party APIs.
Firebase announced the Extensions Marketplace to discover extensions that suit your need and your project. They also introduced new third-party extensions for adding search, chat and payment processing to your app.
This includes:
- Vonage extension to provide video tech support to your customers,
- Meilisearch extension to search for documents in Firestore
- Purchasely extension that integrates in-app payments
Dev and Engineering teams can now also build extensions for their own apps through Firebase’s Provider Alpha program.
Speaking of Firebase Extensions, check out our friends at Invertase.io they’ve already built a couple of great extensions for the Firebase community including:
Check out extensions.dev to explore Firebase Extensions.
Sign up for the Extensions Provider Alpha program to start building your own extensions.
APP QUALITY & USER ENGAGEMENT: IMPROVED
More Efficient Device Testing with Test Lab
Firebase Test Lab integrates with your existing workflow to test your app on thousands of physical and virtual devices, so you can spot errors before a release. However as your apps grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and run consistent configuration tests at scale. To help standardise test configuration, Firebase introduced a new preview of Firebase Test Lab support in Gradle Managed Devices.
You can now get access to all devices supported by Firebase Test Lab with a simple and consistent test configuration format introduced in Android’s Gradle Managed Devices with just a single command line, without having to go into the Firebase Console.
Try this out by upgrading to the latest Preview release of Android Gradle Plugin 8.0.0.
Crashlytics + Android Studio integration get more features
App Quality Insights window graduates to the Beta in Android Studio Electric Eel after being introduced earlier this year. The App Quality Insights window allows you to see crash reports and navigate from crash-to-code within the IDE. This means you can find and fix crashes even faster.
Additionally, Firebase announced they are bringing more Crashlytics features directly into Android Studio in the latest Canary release of Android Studio Flamingo.
- Filter for crashes in Play Tracks — easily filter out the crashes happening in your internal build and prioritize the issues impacting your prod users.
- the App Quality Insights window now has added signals to help quickly identify characteristics of crashes.
- Add notes to crashes to let your team know how your fix is progressing, and close the issue in Android Studio.
Remote Config Personalization to Improve User Engagement
Remote Config personalization can help automatically optimize individual user experiences to maximize user engagement time, feature utilization or ad clicks all thanks to the power of Google’s machine learning.
To get started using personalization, check out the Remote config documentation.
Don’t forget to #AskFirebase…
The rest of the day was spent drinking coffee, hanging out with other Firebasers, and of course watching the 8x Ignite Talks and 4x Expert-led Classes given by some of the awesome Firebase team. If you missed it, be sure to catch the FULL recording of the Firebase Summit 2022 (hopefully the Expert-Led Classes that were for the in-person attendees will make their way online).
Well, that wraps up another addition of Firebase Summit. It was awesome, jam-packed with announcements, talks and coffee. A huge congratulations to the Firebase team for putting on another great event.
What was your favourite moment of #FirebaseSummit2022 — let me know in the comments below.
For More from Firebase and #FirebaseSummit 2022:
- Check out the Firebase Summit 2022 event website
- Join Firebase’s Alpha program
- Subscribe to the Firebase YouTube channel
- Follow the official Firebase blog
- Follow Firebase on Twitter
