Firebase
This section contains information about the Firebase platform and the various services it offers, and how these services are used by your AppMachine app.
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This section contains information about the Firebase platform and the various services it offers, and how these services are used by your AppMachine app.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Firebase is a platform that provides developers with a variety of tools and services which can be used to analyse and extend app functionality. It is built on Google's infrastructure.
Within AppMachine Firebase is used for:
Android push notifications via Cloud Messaging.
App analytics for both iOS and Android via Google Analytics. Learn more..
To be able to understand how these features are combined into your live app, lets first have a quick look at the two main players here.
AppMachine app In the first place we have -of course- the app itself, also called the app runtime. This is the app that you've created in AppMachine which can be installed on your users' devices.
Firebase project The Firebase project is basically the umbrella under which the app's Firebase functionality is nested.
Within the Firebase project you can enable various services. These services are enabled project-wide, meaning all apps that you add / register in your Firebase project can make use of these services. However, please note that enabling a service within the Firebase project does not automatically mean that the service is supported by the app runtime.
The services that are currently supported by AppMachine apps are Cloud Messaging and Google Analytics. Of these services, Cloud Messaging is used to allow you to send push notifications to your Android app users. Google Analytics is an optional service and can be enabled to track the usage of both your iOS and Android app users.
Learn how to:
Using Firebase services in your AppMachine app requires a two-way street in terms of data-transfer. Firebase needs to know which app to communicate with, and AppMachine needs to know which Firebase project to communicate with. In order to create this digital highway for your app's, you have to register your app within your Firebase project.
Registering your app within your Firebase project tells Firebase which app to communicate with, but at this point your app does not yet know how to communicate with Firebase. To solve this, Firebase will provide you with a configuration file (services.json) during the app registration process. This file is added to your app runtime during the publishing process, which tells your app which Firebase project it has to communicate with.
Learn how to: