With Facebook shutting down Parse, everybody knows to never again depend on a third party for their backend solution, right? Sure, and after you spend six months trying to write your own syncing service, how's that working? In 2016, Google has added a ton of features to Firebase, their popular backend-as-a-service solution. Firebase's primary offering is a realtime database in the cloud that syncs changes to and from multiple concurrent users, and their Swift-friendly iOS SDK makes it ideal for mobile use. In this session, you'll learn how to set up a Firebase backend and build an iOS app around it.

1. Firebase: Totally Not
Parse All Over Again
(Unless It Is)
Chris Adamson (@invalidname)
CocoaConf San Jose • November, 2016
Slides available at slideshare.net/invalidname
Code available at github.com/invalidstream

3. Firebase
• Founded in 2011
• Offshoot of Envolve, a chat service that game
developers started using to sync state across
devices
• Main product is a realtime database
• Acquired by Google in October 2014

4. https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/18/google-turns-firebase-into-its-unified-
platform-for-mobile-developers/

5. Firebase @ Google
• 470,000 developers using Firebase
• Arguably the star of Google I/O 2016
• Analytics (from developers of Google
Analytics)
• Notifications (based on Google Cloud
Messaging)

6. Realtime database
• Cloud-based NoSQL database
• Syncs instantly across devices, handles going
offline
• Client SDKs for iOS and Android, REST for web
• Free tier supports 100 simultaneous users, 1GB
storage

7. Getting Started
• Create app on firebase.google.com using your
apps bundle identifier
• Download and add GoogleService-info.plist to
your project

10. Getting Started
• Add the Firebase Cocoapod
• As with all things pod, remember to
use .xcworkspace instead of .xcproj from now
on
• Yes, it is possible to add the frameworks
without Cocoapods

11. Getting Started
• Initialize Firebase in application(_:
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:)
import Firebase
func application(_ application: UIApplication,
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions:
[UIApplicationLaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
// Override point for customization after application launch.
FIRApp.configure()
return true
}

12. Demo

13. Wait, what the…
• Firebase I/O works with a local cache, which in
turn syncs with the backend
• With good connectivity, syncing to backend
and other devices is instantaneous
• When offline, you can keep working with your
local db, which syncs when you’re back online

14. Tree-structured data

15. Tree-structured data
• Your database is basically one big JSON tree
• You access branches and nodes by path
• e.g., /sessions/adamson-firebase/title
• You can query at a given location, but this is not a
relational database.
• If you want to do a table join, you structured
your data incorrectly. Prefer flatness.

16. Getting a Firebase
Reference
• FIRDatabase.reference() returns root of tree as a
FIRDatabaseReference
• Child returns the named child as a
FIRDatabaseReference
firebaseSessions = FIRDatabase.database().reference().
child("sessions")

17. Now What?

18. Observing Firebase
• All interactions with Firebase are asynchronous
• You don’t read the value of a location, you
observe it for changes
• Contents of the child are passed to you on every
change

19. Observe!
• eventType: the type of event you want to
observe (value, child CRUD, etc)
• block: a closure to execute on these events
• returns a handle (dispose it in deinit, or earlier)
firebaseHandle = firebaseSessions?.observe(
FIRDataEventType.value, with: { [weak self] (snapshot) in
self?.parseSessionsFrom(snapshot)
self?.tableView.reloadData()
})

20. Parse!
• Observer block receives a FIRDataSnapshot for
every change
• Immutable, fetch contents with .value()
• Value types: NSDictionary, NSArray (rare),
NSString, NSNumber [or Swift equivalents]

21. Parse sessions list
private func parseSessionsFrom(_ snapshot: FIRDataSnapshot) {
guard let fbSessions = snapshot.value as? [String : Any]
else {
return
}
sessions.removeAll()
for (id, value) in fbSessions {
if let sessionDict = value as? [String : Any],
let session = Session(id: id, dict: sessionDict) {
sessions.append(session)
}
}
}

22. Parse a session
init? (id: String, dict : [String : Any]) {
guard let title = dict["title"] as? String,
let speakerName = dict["speakerName"] as? String,
let description = dict["description"] as? String
else
{
return nil
}
self.id = id
self.title = title
self.speakerName = speakerName
self.description = description
}
Note: id is the node name (the key in the dictionary
on the last slide)

23. Tip!
• FIRDatabaseReference.url can be pasted into
your browser to view the Firebase console for
that location in your db.

24. Demo: Writing data back to
Firebase

25. Creating a location
if let oldId = UserDefaults.standard.string(forKey:
"userId") {
firebaseUser = firebaseAttendees?.child(oldId)
} else {
firebaseUser = firebaseAttendees?.childByAutoId()
let newId = firebaseUser?.key
let firebaseUserName = firebaseUser?.child("name")
firebaseUserName?.setValue("Foo Bar")
UserDefaults.standard.setValue(newId,
forKey: "userId")
UserDefaults.standard.synchronize()
}

26. childByAutoId()

27. Setting a value
let firebaseUserFavorites = firebaseUser?.child("favorites")
let firebaseFavorite = firebaseUserFavorites?.child(sessionId)
firebaseFavorite?.setValue(true)

28. Lists of stuff
• Convention is to have a dict where keys are ids
and values are just “true”

29. Arrays in Firebase ಠ_ಠ
• A dictionary with numeric keys in order will be
sent to your observer as an array rather than a
dictionary
• Not as convenient as you’d think. Pretty much a
Firebase anti-pattern

30. observeSingleEvent()
favoriteTitles.removeAll()
for (sessionId, _) in fbFavorites {
firebaseSessions?.child(sessionId).child(“title").observeSingleEvent(
of: FIRDataEventType.value, with: { [weak self] snapshot in
if let title = snapshot.value as? String {
self?.favoriteTitles.append(
FavoriteItem(favoriteId: sessionId, title: title))
self?.tableView.reloadData()
}
})
}
Note: observeSingleEvent() does not return a handle
for you to hold on to and dispose later

31. Authentication
• Firebase provides an email + password system
• Can also use Google, Twitter, Facebook, or
GitHub credentials
• Or roll your own and provide an OAuth token

32. Database rules
• Define per-branch access based on
authentication
• Can require that user just be logged in, or that
their Firebase user id matches the one that
created the node

33. Default access
// These rules require authentication
{
"rules": {
".read": "auth != null",
".write": "auth != null"
}
}

34. Public access
// These rules give anyone, even people who are not users of your app,
// read and write access to your database
{
"rules": {
".read": true,
".write": true
}
}
Private access: just make read/write false

35. User access
// These rules grant access to a node matching the authenticated
// user's ID from the Firebase auth token
{
"rules": {
"users": {
"$uid": {
".read": "$uid === auth.uid",
".write": "$uid === auth.uid"
}
}
}
}

36. Case Study

37. MathElf
• “Über for high-school math tutoring”
• Students request help on a topic, are paired with
a tutor in less than a minute
• Student and tutor work on problems via voice
chat and a shared whiteboard

38. MathElf Demo

39. MathElf & Firebase
• Authentication and user financials are done
through rev.com (parent company) backend,
making REST calls to Firebase
• Basically everything in the whiteboard and
session history is Firebase

40. User Metadata

41. Page Contents

42. Picture metadata

43. Drawing paths

44. mathelf.com

45. Firebase “con”s
• Limited visibility when something goes wrong
• When things don’t sync, is it them or you?
• Single point of failure, owned and operated by a
third party
• Could be Parse all over again

46. Takeaways
• Firebase database-as-a-service is well-suited to
mobile apps
• Real-time sync, still works when offline
• Structure your data as flat JSON trees, not SQL-
like tables
• All reads are asynchronous. Hope you like
closures/blocks.

47. Firebase: Totally Not
Parse All Over Again
(Unless It Is)
Chris Adamson (@invalidname)
CocoaConf San Jose • November, 2016
Slides available at slideshare.net/invalidname
Code available at github.com/invalidstream