Basic knowledge of firebase for React Native

Firebase for react-native :

Firebase is a mobile and web application development platform which is created in 2014 by google. It is a product of google which is offered to developers for free. It is totally managed by google hence assures in terms of privacy, quality, and security. There is a remarkable growth of firebase in the google cloud platform. It is also famous for its backend services. It provides backend services to android, Ios, and even the web. It can store real-time data, which can be synchronized to multiple available devices. Its database is a NOSQLjson type database that often stores information in the form of a tree. NOSQLjson database was the first product of firebase.

Features of firebase:

Real-time database: it consists of a cloud-hosted database. The information is stored in the form of JSON. A cloud-hosted database has multiple advantages, but the most important one is that if you will update (insert or delete) the data in the database so it can be done in an easy manner, and all the devices will get synchronized in an instant, means all the devices will get informed about the changes in a very short period. We can use it while styling offline also. When the user is offline, then all the updated data will be stored in local storage. All the locally stored data will be synchronized when the user goes online. Using firebase is secured. Users can only access the data which belongs to them only. We know that the NoSQL database is unstructured, but you can structure your data in firebase. The most interesting fact is that all the things mentioned above can be done by writing just some lines of code, which is the biggest advantage. You are getting so many functionalities with no complexity.

Firebase authentication:

When any user is provided a facility to access some information on any application or website, it is necessary to identify whether it is the user who is supposed to access it or not. This is done by authentication. It can be done by passwords, email, or OTP, etc. Authentication is required because the data can be confidential, and nowadays, data is the most valuable thing ever.

Authentication is very easy for firebase. Firebase also provides user authentication, and a token-based system does it. The token-based system can be very easily integrated with applications or platforms. It offers multi roles. You can create multiple roles for a single user, and its API can be integrated in no time.

Features of firebase authentication:

Here we will be discussing the core features of firebase, but it has a very narrow scope.

Federated identity provider integration:

It is one of the popular methods of authentication that is used nowadays. Here users can access the platform by authenticating themselves using-

• Google
• Twitter
• Github
• Facebook

Drop-in authentication solution :

This authentication process consists of whole verification or sign-in process with email ids, phone numbers, etc. it can be used for web and app both. This is the bst way of adding authentication to your application, and it is open source so that anyone can add this authentication to their app. All they need to do is add this feature from SDK firebase.

Phone number authentication:

Nowadays, we often witness phone number verification. It is present in almost every app. here, the user is identified by verifying its phone number with an SMS. It is a good feature. It works according to the situation. One drawback of the free firebase authentication system is that only 10000 phone authentication can be done in a month, however, paid versions do not contain this problem.

Custom authentication system integration

If anybody wants to authenticate the existing authentication system of their application/website so this can be done using custom authentication system integration.

Advantages of firebase authentication :

• Building an application for authentication is very time-consuming, so we can save that time using firebase.
• It is reliable for users and provides the best user experience.

Firebase analytics

There are various analytics tools available in the market, but the firebase analytics tool is one of the best tools for analytics. Normally we all know that through analytics, we monitor our app's performance. It can give us information about how users ( android and IOS both) are interacting with your application. When the app is settled, it automatically starts monitoring the performance at the beginning, which will be available for users. It tracks and even provides demographics of a given app. developers need to know user behavior to make the right decision for the existing app. firebase can provide very significant user behavior.

People are often confused between google analytics and firebase analytics, and understanding the difference between them is necessary. Google Analytics is focused on the web, and firebase analytics is focused on mobile applications (Android, IOS).google analytics is sometimes used for mobile application monitoring. Still, it's dedicated to the web, so we should go for firebase while using the mobile applications.

Features of firebase analytics

1. All the properties of firebase analytics can be customized according to the application.
2. You can integrate it with Admob for better user behavior understanding. It is easy and simple.
3. Segmentation, optimization, and testing can easily be done, which is available in the dashboard.
4. Analysis dashboard can go through real-time analysis, which provides better information.

Advantages of Firebase analytics:

• It provides complete information on behavior which makes decisions easy for developers.
• It is the best platform for mobile developers.

Firebase cloud messaging

Firebase facilitates users with many options to perform different activities, and messaging is one of them. It is a feature that enables users to push notifications across different devices(android, IOS, etc.). Here third-party application developers can also handle the application.

Features of cloud messaging:

A cloud messaging application should possess the following attributes-

• It should be free to use.
• It should give a reliable experience to users.
• The battery consumption of the application should be as low as possible.
• It should have the cross-platform property(here, cross-platform means that it should work on android as well as IOS).

The firebase cloud messaging consists of all the features mentioned above. It also has overall efficient performance.

Message targeting

Here targeting message feature is also available, which is vital for digital and multimedia marketing. Here we can use pre-defined segments and the current segment, which makes things easier. You can also target a single device for message targeting. You have to pay for this service if you want to enable it. It does not come with the free version of firebase.

Customized notification service

This service is only for user reliability which may contain the following things.

•  Different notifications enable for some specific person/task or app.
• It may also contain priority notifications.
• Some notifications are location-based that can also be done using customized notifications.
• We can have a time-based indication feature by this.

Simple coding

Firebase cloud messaging needs very small codes or even no code to enable a messaging option that makes it easier to use. Works or tasks are performed using API or SDK., even if you want to implement complex messaging features or analytics tracking, and then it can also be done by writing just a few codes.

Consists of A/B testing

It makes the application good by the time using real-time data, which is observed by user behavior. It improves the quality of the application.

The cloud messaging feature is free, but some features are paid, but almost firebase analytics is free to use.

Firebase storage

We know that firebase is used as a backend process. What actually does backend means? In simple language, it means that our application is responsive. We can extract user data too. Now the question arises where firebase stores the extracted information well. When you create a Firebase project, then a google cloud project is also created where the data is being stored, and it is an unstructured database. The whole firebase data is managed by its existing framework and infrastructure for hosting and managing mobile applications.

Firebase storage methods

There are various Firebase storage methods. Some of them are listed below -

Using reference to access files: we know that it is a real-time database where you can easily access any file or folder by just passing a reference to its address. You can also manage the files while uploading and labeling.

Uploading files: uploading a file is simple, but you must have reference to the location where you want to store the current uploading file. Files can be uploaded not only by memory but by streams too.

Monitoring the file transfer: you can get detailed information like the total size of the file, the rate of transfer, the left portion of the transfer, etc. while downloading or uploading any file. You can customize it as per your desire, where you can only get details that you want or have already added.

All of this is performed by the google cloud platform.

Firebase crash reporting: it is used to manage available errors, or it can report the available error that why it's called crash reporting.

So this was a basic overview of firebase.

We have to integrate react native application with firebase to fetch data and responses from the user.

Installing Firebase dependencies in our react native app:

• Npm install firebase
  
  or

• Yarn add firebase

You need to create at least three files, and then you can integrate the firebase with react native application. Integration is not so tough, but first, you need to understand the firebase properly. Then you can perform all necessary operations and felicitate the app with the necessary features.