[Music]
ask
Firebase what's up everybody Welcome to
a brand new episode of # askf Firebase
and we have a special one this week
coding Doug is here with us and fun fact
about Doug is that he has better than
average Vision in only one eye and uh
fun fact about Dave is that he wanted to
name his first child
Kanye Kanye East but anyways we have a
great show for you today we got lots of
questions from and Devcon so let's dive
in oh uh there's no gum here this your
computer
yeah really first up we have a question
from Jim at andevcon let's check it out
my question for Firebase is this we've
got all these new features feels like
Christmas I'd like to know what's for
Christmas next year what can you tell me
about fire base's plans for the future
this this is a difficult question to
answer because Google we usually don't
talk about the future we don't make
promises and we don't want to be
misleading in any way I would love to
tell you more but I can't I will tell
you this that one of the Hallmarks of
the Firebase product is its ability for
all of its features to work well
together and we feel like we could do
that even better than we do now for
example analytics works well with a lot
of different features and we would like
that to be even more than it is now
there's been a lot of demand for serers
side hosted logic which is very crucial
for a lot of apps to move logic from
their app to the server we're looking at
ways to get that uh done in a cost
effective and flexible way so you know
you can look for those things I haven't
really had my one-on-one with Santa yet
so have you been naughty let's cut that
part so let's check out our next
question from Gary I'd like to ask
Firebase how would I take an existing
SQL light database that is relational
and Port that to Firebase storage
services that is a great question Gary
and one that we get quite often so
there's no straightforward way of doing
it there are two totally different types
of databases but there are a couple
tricks that you should know so if you're
going to start out with SQL you usually
work with tables and with no SQL there's
no tables there's no foreign Keys
there's none of that but what you can do
is take these tables and treat them as
top level nodes in your nosql database
anywhere where you have a foreign key
you can use the shared key Concept in no
SQL which pretty much means that these
keys that you're using in your SQL
database you tend to just borrow them on
the nosql side so you make sure that
each one of your nodes when it needs to
relate to something just match is up so
like I said there's no straightforward
way of doing it but if you follow some
of these practices it does make your
life a lot easier next like this next
question I'd like to ask Firebase how to
send notifications based on app events
for example if a user logs out of our
app and we want to get them back is it
possible to send them a notification all
right thanks for the question Ben and by
the way uh I remember you and your team
from the hackathon it was a ton of fun
to your question about sending
notifications to users who have logged
out you can't do that with Firebase
notifications but you can do that with
Firebase Cloud messaging it just
requires that you have a server side
component to your app and on your server
side logic you can respond to a log out
um then uh schedule a message to be sent
later on so you can't do this on the
client side only right now but if you do
have your own server side that can make
that logic you can do it that way and on
the server there's sdks for the
real-time database so you can actually
monitor the things that happen in your
app so you can set up a queuing system
so when something happens you can do
something like send that push
notification or send a payment or really
whatever you want to do so this next
question comes from Lucy I'd like to ask
Firebase do you make it easy to include
photos and Video in mobile apps and do
you allow permission settings for who
can read and write the photos and videos
that is a great question Lucy and by the
way thank you so much for participating
in the hackathon so do we make it easy
to include photos and videos and set
user permissions on them yeah we do
Firebase storage is the perfect solution
for this so with Firebase storage all
you do is include the SDK in your app
and then when the user selects a photo a
video really any file you can upload
that to Firebase storage without any
need for a server and as far as
authenticating users and protecting
their data well when you integrate with
Firebase authentication you can set
security rules that secure those files
to their proper owners that is all
customized by you in the Firebase
console so David just how many photos
could you store in Firebase storage 1
million photos but seriously probably
like a lot more than that next question
I'd like to ask Firebase how your
notifications differ from doing
notifications through APNs on uh apple
or iOS and how they differ from Google
Cloud messaging great question Sean so
turns out that Google Cloud messaging
was actually rebranded to Firebase Cloud
messaging and as part of that rebranding
there's now more things that it can do
than GCM used to be able to do so you
can still send messages to Android
devices and you can send messages to iOS
devices and you can send messages to web
clients as well so you can do all that
through fcm but in your specific case
you asked about APNs which is what you
Ed to send to iOS devices so it turns
out that fcm uses APNs behind the scenes
to send its notifications so when you're
using fcm you're actually using APNs in
the background you don't have to worry
about all those details is there another
question sure is I'd like to ask
Firebase to explain good use cases for
Firebase with the Internet of Things
including specific examples in in both
practice and code so that is a great
question Stephen and a lot of people are
using the real-time database for their
iot needs and you can actually use the
realtime database SDK on in Arduino so
it's a really nice fit there Y and it
turns out there's code samples too so if
you go to GitHub you can check out a
project there and see how it's done so
the links are right here right here
right here if you use the links right
here to see how it's done so that's all
the questions for this week thank you
all so much for sending them in and if
you have any more questions make sure to
send them into to us on YouTube Twitter
stack Overflow just use the hash askf
Firebase and we'll get to them and if
you're interested in getting started
with Firebase and Android check out this
guy's screencast right here on our
YouTube channel and if you'd like to
find out more about David East you can
read David East diary going online right
now
[Music]
he