You have already heard that Facebook is closing its Parse developer platform. After acquiring the service of Parse which was then focusing completely on mobile developers, Facebook reported $85 million in 2013 and turned Parse into one of the key developer services.
Though Parse will operate until January 28, 2017, and developers will have time to move their products over to other platforms, still this will be quite a hassle for developers who have brainstormed 600,000 apps built on the platform.
A- What Is Firebase
Firebase is a real-time cloud data service. Data in Firebase exist in standard JSON and therefore, developers can easily access it using a client library or the REST API. When data is accessed via client library, data changes are synchronized in real-time within few milliseconds. Firebase is designed for building real-time and collaborative applications. For providing extraordinary user experiences, Firebase powers your app’s backend which includes data storage, static hosting, and user authentication.
B- Features – Firebase
B1 : Firebase offers Real Time Database
When you are developing an app on various platforms using Firebase Android, iOS, and JavaScript SDKs, all your clients will be sharing one Firebase database and they will start receiving updates automatically with the new data.
- Auto scaling with your app: In case your app faces a breakout hit, you just have to stay calm and do not have to worry about scaling your server code. Do not even worry for provisioning that extra capacity, Firebase handles automatically for you. Firebase Servers manage millions of concurrent connections and billions of operations per month.
- Premium security features: Data in Firebase gets transferred over a secure SSL connection with 2048-bit certificate. Database access and validation are performed at a very microscopic level with quite flexible security rules language. Firebase data security logic is organized at one place which is making it easy to update and verify.
- Offline Behaviour: Application build using Firebase will always remain responsive irrespective of the fact of network latency or Internet connectivity. Your Firebase applications will work even if your app loses its network connection temporarily. Firebase offers several tools for monitoring presence and synchronizing local state with server state.
B2- Firebase Authentication
Most of your applications demand the identity of a user. Knowing a user’s identity allows an app to offer a customized experience and hence grant them permissions to access their data. Firebase makes authentication easy. It has a built-in authentication services which can handle user login entirely with client-side code. Firebase also offers built-in functionality for email & password authentication and third-party providers such as Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, and Google.
B3: Firebase Hosting
Firebase offers you with the delivery of your static content (html, js, images, etc.) over a secure SSL connection and then serve it on a CDN. Using Firebase flexible Security and Firebase Rules language which can easily define which users have read-and-write access to different parts of your app’s data. You can even edit and test your rules directly in your App Dashboard by clicking on the Security & Rules tab. Deploying made easy, truly.
- Deploy in within few seconds: Deploy your app using the Firebase command line tools and with just one click roll back to previous versions. Each app will get its own firebaseapp.com domain, and the paid apps can be deployed to a custom domain.
- SSL by default: Your app is served with a secured connection, and hence the provisioning of SSL is certain for you if well-taken.
C: Coming On Common Grounds
Though Parse can be considered as a competitor, it has been a prominent part of the developer tools community and ecosystem as well. Developers are definitely getting many alternatives for Parse, but all those are backed with the considerations which developers have to make. Developers are choosing CloudKit as a great way of storing data and that too of iOS only. For more flexibility and less infrastructure management, developers are going with AWS Mobile Hub. But it seems now everyone is preferring use of Firebase over Parse as both are somewhat similar and they both empower developers to create great apps. And anything fresh if reliable has good chances to be a hit!
References: Configure, Techcrunch, Quora, Firebase, Raywenderlich
Rachit Agarwal
