Developing a website or a mobile application could be an exhaustive process as it involves a lot of time and cost. Nevertheless, there are a lot of services, on the other hand, which are capable of assisting the development work in various ways. And one of them is through Firebase. This creative way takes away a major chunk of the burden from the developers’ shoulders.
Launched in the year 2012 April, Firebase is a framework that was anticipated to be a real-time database providing its APIs, letting users save and sync information across various customers. And this was the story when it first got launched. But when it was taken over by Google after 2 years, today, the same Firebase offers various functions that companies might find exceptionally valuable. To our surprise, Firebase has reached to 450, 000 plus developers currently from 110, 000 when it was taken over by Google in the year 2014.
Now, what is a Firebase exactly?
Firebase is a framework which helps in developing websites and web applications for companies across the globe with real-time database and that means when one user updates his or her record in the database, then that particular update would be projected to all users whether it is the website or a web application. This gives a basic and unified platform with rich features so that developers need not configure their server while using Firebase. The framework will take care of everything automatically.
There are a number of components which make working with Firebase excellent from a developer’s eye, which pertain to the core technology of the development. This will help to maintain the state of harmony between the developer and the customer by causing a minimal delay of work.
Now let’s check out some of the top benefits of using Firebase
1. Hosting
Production-grade web content which helps the developers in effectively sending apps and static content to CDN ( content delivery network) by just using one command. The process is extremely easy in Firebase as it consists Auto Provisioned SSL (Security Socket Layer) certificate ideas, Customized domain support, and Global CDN regardless developers are sending a single landing page or a complex web application. Hosting provides the best features and tools that are customized to build and manage static websites.
2. Authentication
Firebase authentication provides instant UI libraries, backend services, simple to utilize SDKs so that you can confirm customers over your app. It supports authentication utilizing username, email ids, or passwords. In addition, developers are allowed to let users sign in to their Firebase application either by utilizing FirebaseUI as a drop in authentication solution or by utilizing the Firebase Authentication SDK to manually incorporate sign-in techniques into the app.
3. Cloud Messaging
A cross-platform messaging solution, Firebase cloud messaging, allows users dependably send messages at literally no cost. You can let a customer know that a new message or another type of information is accessible for synchronization. Also, developers can send notifications to engage users and drive maintenance.
4. Test Lab
Used for testing the app on devices posted in a Google data center, this feature assists developers in finding issues with only happen on specific device configuration. Test Lab result consists of videos, images, logs, etc. that are available in your project in the Firebase console. In addition to that, this feature is capable of practicing your app constantly and will look for crashes even if you didn’t compose any test code for your app.
5. Notifications
Mobile app developers will get focused user notifications. This gives a choice for both developers and companies who are looking for an adaptable notification platform that needs basic coding work to start and a graphical console for sending messages.
6. Invites
Do you want to increase your users and compel them to download your application then word of mouth advertising stands out from the crowd? With the help of this feature, Firebase can actually make it happen. You can easily send customized messages emails and invitations to all your prospective clients.
7. Crash Reporting
This feature will help in creating a detailed report of the error that is categorized into groups of comparative stack flow picked out by the seriousness of impact on users. Apart from that, you can get registered to custom events that will help in figuring out a crash before it even happens.
8. Real-time database
It is a cloud-hosted database. Information will be stored as JSON and can be synchronized continuously to every related customer. This is especially true when you develop cross-platform apps with Android, iOS, JavaScript SDKs, the major role of your client’s demand will be depending on the real-time database example and continuously getting updates with the latest data. By using the Firebase Real-time database feature, there will be no need to build your own database or API as the Framework will be able to manage all the parts which generally come along by creating a backend for applications. It provides a flexible and expression based rules language to describe how organized your data should be and when the data should be scrutinized from or created to.
9. Storage
This feature is developed for application developers who feel the necessity to store and serve user-curated content such as images and videos. This feature provides safe document transfers and downloads for Firebase apps no matter how bad the network quality is. You can use it to save images, audios videos, and other user-curated content. Supported by Google cloud storage, Firebase storage is extremely cost- affordable.
10. Powerful Links
These powerful links will drastically change behavior to give the best user experience across various platforms such as social media networking platforms, emails, or any other promotions to improve user engagement, maintenance, and value to gain end to end insights Into all your development sources via analytics on the Firebase console.
11. App Indexing
By utilizing this feature, you can easily get to index your App in Google search. For example, if your app is already downloaded on a user’s device And whenever he searches for similar content, it will live your application directly from the search page. And if users don’t have your app then it a download button pops up in search results page.
Almost all features can be can be utilized and implemented while using Firebase. However, they have their own restrictions and trade-offs. For instance, unless your app is running over a unified database that is being edited by the various number of users at the same time and the updates are needed to be notified, the utilization of Firebase is not legitimized. As important review features and functions can be run by MySQL database.
Nevertheless, if you have a business app to be built, then Firebase is one of the best options. With effective and result-driven features, Firebase is all you need to launch your application.