Flutter & Firebase
Top 5 Facts you don’t know about FlutterFire 🔥
Flutter & Firebase together make one of the Best 🙌🏻 Tech Stack. But, there is an Incomplete Amount of Knowledge 🤔 and Many Misbeliefs 🤯 about it. So Let’s Fill those Gaps & Burst those Myths 😎 !!
Note: Find these Long Articles Boring 😑 ? You can check the same in a more Visual & Attractive format here.
FlutterFire is one of the Best Tech Stack I have seen to Build & Deploy an App 📱 Easily & Quickly 🤩. But do you know everything about it? Let me share 5 less-known but amazing facts about it.
1. Firebase Extensions
Though Firebase already includes so many awesome features, Firebase Extensions provide even more functionalities & make it more Powerful.
For Example -
- Payments with Stripe
- E-Mails by Mailchimp
- Search with Algolia
- URL Shortening
These extensions can be simply activated for your Firebase Project & used for your app. Here are some links to get you started -
2. Firebase Analytics
A Very Extensive Tool that provides Insights about User Engagement and even more Robust when used with Cloud Messaging & Remote Config, Firebase Analytics is an Undermined Asset that I recommend everyone to use! It helps you to make more informed decisions and gives you insights into your audience.
Also, It’s so easy to get started with - just initialize the class in the main() function before runApp(). It will automatically start collecting user data.
You can also dive deep into it and start Logging Custom User Events, Observing User Navigation in your app, and much more!
See more about it here -
3. The Firebase CLI
Tired of checking the Console now and then?
Use the Firebase CLI to Manage your Project more efficiently. Initialize FlutterFire in your main directory and manage your Security Rules, Cloud Functions, etc directly from your Terminal! It also improves your efficiency while coding.
Learn more about the CLI -
To initialize a Firebase Project, use $firebase init in your main Flutter App Directory. Now you can use the CLI to manage your project.
Take help of this Reference to learn about the various Commands.
4. Firebase Costs
Is Firebase Expensive?
No. Not until your app has Thousands of Daily Users.
And if your app becomes so Popular, then I don’t think it will still look Costly to you…
Where people screw up is Firestore Data Modelling & Security. If your Data is not structured correctly, you will incur a large number of unwanted reads.
So how to be safe from that?
You can use techniques like Duplication & Aggregation to manage your data more efficiently.
Typically, for building one screen of your UI, you must incur only one read.
5. Firebase Emulators
One of my Favourite Tools, did you even knew about it?
If your app is already in production and you want to test out a feature, you would have to either create a new Firebase Project or mess up the production (don’t do that).
So how to do that?
With the help of Firebase Emulators.
It is Best to Try & Test a new feature while your app is live.
Services like Cloud Functions or Firestore are created in a local environment for testing purposes. Now you can freely do whatever you want there.
Get started with Firebase Emulators.
To use the Emulators you need to have firebase CLI installed.
Use the command $firebase emulators:startto start the Emulator.
Learn about using the various Emulators with Flutter -
- Using Firestore Emulator
- Using Auth Emulator
- Using Cloud Functions Emulator
- Using Cloud Storage Emulator
A Must Know for everyone !!
I hope that you learned something new & Thank you for your precious time. If you liked it, be sure to give it some Claps & Follow FlutterFever. See you in the next Article! PS: You can also connect with me on Telegram.
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