What is React Native Firebase? Introduction, Functions & Analytics

Developers of mobile applications who use React Native have an edge while developing, all thanks to Firebase, a Backend as a Service (BaaS). As a React Native developer, you can start creating a minimum viable product by utilizing Firebase, keeping expenses down, and quickly developing the application.

In this blog, we’ll be exploring React Native Firebase App. To make the content of the blog clear to you, let’s have a look over the points to be covered and let’s rollout.

Table of Contents

• What is React Native Firebase?
  • What is React Native?
  • What is Firebase?
• React Native Firebase Analytics
• React Native Firebase Functions
• React Native Firebase Storage
• Conclusion

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What is React Native Firebase?

We are about to kick start our journey to learn about this very popular pair used by developers. In this section, we will talk about React Native Firebase, and we will also visit both technologies separately.

• In a nutshell, React Native Firebase is the relational term used to officially depict the collection of packages that provides services and support of React Native for Firebase on iOS and android.
• To learn about this highly efficient technological pair you should have a basic understanding of TypeScript, JavaScript, and its associated frameworks noticeably React.Js.
• React Native Firebase is an open-source tool that belongs to the category of Platform as a Service (PaaS), which is used to provide the necessary services to users/clients.
• Companies like Fisher, and Jumpn uses React Native Firebase as their service provider.
• Before using them in your system you must have the developing environment setup, we will also cover some of the installation parts in this blog.

What is React Native?

Now, it is time to visit the first technology alone, in this sub-section we will discuss React Native. Read the below-mentioned points for the same.

• React Native is among the most popular frameworks for producing cross-platform software from a single source of code.
• React Native was developed by Meta, at that time Facebook, for its internal application development, and later on, react native was released commercially in open-source for everyone.
• Initially, React Native was developed for iOS applications, later it was made compatible with android. At present many tech giants are trying to make it compatible with the rest of the platforms.
• React Native is having rich active community members, and these guys work dedicatedly to make React Native more efficient, fault-tolerant, scalable, and easy to use.
• React Native is still a very popular framework as compared to its new alternative Flutter.

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What is Firebase?

Transitioning to the next sub-section of the blog. Now it’s the time to discuss Firebase. Thoroughly read the below-mentioned points, these points will let you know about Firebase in detail.

• Firebase is a type of backend-as-a-application owned by Google, developed by Google for the users as a backend application hosting platform.
• Firebase provides numerous services to the user namely a real-time NoSQL-based database, cloud storage with high accessibility, and a highly scalable system.
• Firebase is maintained by Google and a very large number of active and dedicated community members. They keep up the good work of making firebase better day by day.
• Using the Firebase Performance Monitoring tool, developers may gain insight into the performance traits of their iOS and Android apps to assist them to decide where and when to improve those apps’ performance.

This concludes the first section of the blog. Let’s summarize what we learned in the previous section first and transition to the next section of the blog.

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React Native Firebase Analytics

To go deeper into the fundamentals of React Native Firebase, we will now introduce you to React Native Firebase Analytics. This section will cover the fundamentals of it, but it requires some system configuration beforehand. You should have @react-native-firebase/app installed on your system.

• Use the below-mentioned commands to install @react-native-firebase/app in your system.
  • Installing app module – yarn add @react-native-firebase/app
  • Installing analytics module – yarn add @react-native-firebase/analytics
  • For iOS users – cd ios/ && pod install
• React Native Firebase Analytics is used to collect data for the application, which usually consists of the behavioral data of the application, and the events happening while the application is running.
• User properties are the attributes like geolocation, device configuration, personal information of the user, and many more.
• React Native Firebase Analytics automatically logs the data, this acquired data can be used to enhance the application’s performance and abilities.
• This auto-logging of the data can also be disabled, to re-enable the logging method use the following command.

import { firebase } from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';
// ... await   
firebase.analytics().setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true); 

• There is a concept called React Navigation which is categorized under React Native Firebase Analytics. It is used to track the screen of the users/clients.
• For example, firebase.analytics().setCurrentScreen(action.routeName); this statement will record the stats from the current screen only.

Now we are finally over with one of the important concepts of React Native Firebase. Let’s progress to the next section of the blog and learn about yet another concept of React Native Firebase.

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React Native Firebase Functions

This part of learning also has the same pre-requisite as that of the previous section, that is, you should have @react-native-firebase/app in your system to practically implement it. This part will let you know about the React Native Firebase Functions, read the below-mentioned points to get through the concept.

• React Native Firebase Functions allow you to automatically run the backend code for the application on event triggers and HTTP requests.
• The codes are deployed and stored in a managed environment of google cloud.
• The functions deployed over the cloud can be triggered directly using one of the three ways: the first one is from the HTTP requests, the second is cloud function modules and the last one is background functions.
• Functions used in this Firebase don’t require external scalability, and complex tasks to be performed. It can be done with minimal maintenance.
• Follow the below-mentioned commands to create a react native firebase function in a react native firebase app from scratch, you need firebase-tools packages.
• The Command to install firebase-tools

npm install -g firebase-tools

• Initialization of function

firebase init functions

• Mockup data from function, if needed

cd functions/ 
npm install faker

• The Command for function testing

cd functions/ npm run serve

• The command for deploying the function

cd functions/ 
npm run deploy

To summarize, we have discussed basic commands for React Native Firebase Functions and learned about the basic crux. In the coming section, we are going to discuss React Native Firebase Storage.

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React Native Firebase Storage

Here, in the blog’s final portion, we’ll go over everything there is to know about React Native Firebase Storage. Read out the coming up pointers to know React Native Firebase Storage in a better way. But, before this, do a quick system check, you’ll be needing @react-native-firebase/app installed in your system.

• In simple words, react native firebase storage refers to the storage needed by the developers of the application to store the data generated by the users/clients.
• The data is stored in a Google cloud storage bucket, this bucket for storage happens to be highly accessible. The option for multiple cloud storage buckets is also possible.
• This Google cloud storage bucket provides a very secure environment for data storage, in this users can upload data from their devices.
• The file uploaded in the cloud storage bucket has a reference, this reference eases the process of file accessing, extracting, and manipulating.
• The reference point in a cloud storage bucket simply means a point of file or the level of the node in the hierarchical structure of stored data.

• Command to create a reference point

import storage from '@react-native-firebase/storage'; 
const reference = storage().ref('black-t-shirt-sm.png');

We have just concluded the final section of the blog, now it’s time to land on the conclusion.

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Conclusion

In the blog, we tried to explain the basics of React Native Firebase and talk about ‘What is React Native Firebase’. We covered all the subsequent topics that you need to know, prior to using this combination for development purposes. We hope that this blog has provided you with the correct path to kickstart your career in this domain.

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