Time is money, and for development, this saying is true like for nothing else. Firebase is a new service that might significantly help in developing apps for web and mobile. Rubyroid Labs Team has checked this service to learn whether it is as good as they say about it. See details inside.

What Firebase is about?

Firebase is software development kit designed for creating mobile (Android and iOS) and web applications. This cloud service allows automatic data synchronization between clients and with its cloud servers. Data in Firebase are stores as standard JSON, and developers can access it using a client library or the REST API. When accessed through a client library, changes to data are synchronized in real-time to clients in no time.

What are the top features?

1. Real-time Database

Data are stored in cloud and are synchronized in real-time to all clients in is currently connected. When an app goes offline it is available for use.

2. Authentication

Firebase offers a wide range of authentication options including Google, Github, Facebook, and anonymous login, and is easily integrated with any other authentication system.

3. Hosting

One can quickly deploy web application using Firebase Hosting service. The options include e.g. getting SSL certification and serving data at Firebase global CDN.

Who should pay attention to this service?

Firebase seems to be a perfect choice for small collaborative or social applications, when one has many Users working with the same data simultaneously. Data is updated really quickly and if e.g. a model is changed on one end, it is changed everywhere else with no need for manual re-syncing. This way if flexibility and multi-user approach are really crucial to you, it might be worth having a look at Firebase.

Rubyroid Labs Team Review

Firebase is a pretty good cloud service for storing and synchronizing data in real-time. Synchronization is really quick, which provides great three-way data binding. Multi-User feature might save you a lot of time and is great for collaboration. It is easy to use, for example posting for deploy can be done just within 1 command. Besides, Firebase has some ready plugins (e.g. chat). There is high probability that in a few years many small projects will be developed using SDKs like Firebase. The only aspect that is questionable is pricing, but things might change with the development of the service.

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