Talk held at the MiniConf #3 by Code Chrysalis at the beautiful IDEO Office in Omotesando, Tokyo. If you hold the right to any picture used in the presentation, please contact me and I will take them down.

1. 1
Lessons learned from using
Firebase in Production
Maik Buchmeyer
@mediavrog
CTO @ AIR at en-japan
https://air.en-japan.io

2. 2
Intro
Innovation arm of en-japan since 2014
Digitalise en-japans service portfolio
Innovate in HR using modern technology
CTO at AIR
Creator, love side projects
Suica and IC Card reader

3. 3
Agenda
1. What is Firebase?
2. About Video Interview
3. Service Architecture
4. Lessons learned
5. Q&A

4. 4
What is Firebase?

5. 5
Mobile Application
Development Platform
What is Firebase?

6. 6
GrowAnalytics
Develop Quality
In 2018
What is Firebase?

7. 7
Gets a lot of love
as well as critique*
and everything in between.
* recently less so
Firebase

8. 8
Why chose
Firebase?
“Focus on providing value”
● Start low cost but able to scale
● Performance and Availability
● Infrastructure, Auth, API,
common app features
out of the box

9. 9
VideoInterview.io

10. 10
Video Interviewing Platform
About Video Interview

11. 11
Released Aug. 2017
> 500 company accounts
~ 100 interviews / month
About Video Interview

12. 12
Service Architecture

13. 13
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Service Architecture
media storage
transcoding pipeline
iOSWebWeb
Recruiter Candidate
raw
video
HLS
video
Realtime Database
Main app database
Light file storage
(profile images, logos)
Main (d/s/p)
“Backend”
(Mails, HTTP API.)
Candidate (d/s/p)
Hosting CDN
Dashboard
Hosting CDN
d/s/p: development / staging / production environments
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C
Admin
(read only) Web
auth
Hosting CDN
web socket connections via
Firebase Web & iOS SDKs
...
url
Media
upload
request
Media
upload

14. 14
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Service Architecture
media storage
transcoding pipeline
iOSWebWeb
Recruiter Candidate
raw
video
HLS
video
Realtime Database
Main app database
Light file storage
(profile images, logos)
Main (d/s/p)
“Backend”
(Mails, HTTP API.)
Candidate (d/s/p)
Hosting CDN
Dashboard
Hosting CDN
d/s/p: development / staging / production environments
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C
Admin
(read only) Web
auth
Hosting CDN
web socket connections via
Firebase Web & iOS SDKs
...
url
Media
upload
request
Media
upload

15. 15
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Service Architecture
media storage
transcoding pipeline
iOSWebWeb
Recruiter Candidate
raw
video
HLS
video
Realtime Database
Main app database
Light file storage
(profile images, logos)
Main (d/s/p)
“Backend”
(Mails, HTTP API.)
Candidate (d/s/p)
Hosting CDN
Dashboard
Hosting CDN
d/s/p: development / staging / production environments
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C
Admin
(read only) Web
auth
Hosting CDN
...
url
Integration B
C

16. 16
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Service Architecture
media storage
transcoding pipeline
iOSWebWeb
Recruiter Candidate
raw
video
HLS
video
Realtime Database
Main app database
Light file storage
(profile images, logos)
Main (d/s/p)
“Backend”
(Mails, HTTP API.)
Candidate (d/s/p)
Hosting CDN
Dashboard
Hosting CDN
d/s/p: development / staging / production environments
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C
Admin
(read only) Web
auth
Hosting CDN
...
url
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C

17. 17
Integration C
(Optional) Hosting
Integration B
Service Architecture
media storage
transcoding pipeline
iOSWebWeb
Recruiter Candidate
raw
video
HLS
video
Realtime Database
Main app database
Light file storage
(profile images, logos)
Main (d/s/p)
“Backend”
(Mails, HTTP API.)
Candidate (d/s/p)
Hosting CDN
Dashboard
Hosting CDN
d/s/p: development / staging / production environments
Integration A
(Optional) Hosting
HTTP API
3rd Parties
A B C
Admin
(read only) Web
auth
Hosting CDN
...
url

18. 18
Lessons learned

19. 19
Event-driven
database
Lessons learned
“Realtime” as default great
design choice for UX.
+ Reactive, delightful UI/UX
- Denormalized data in RTDB,
needs to be kept in sync
- “Big JSON”
- No shallow queries
- One region us-west-1
- 100.000 concurrent users
New projects should default to
Firestore!
- Collections/Documents
- Complex queries
- Multi-region
- 1.000.000 concurrent users

20. 20
Security
Rules
Lessons learned
3,000+ mobile apps leaking
data from unsecured Firebase
databases
+ Single location for
authorization close to data
- huge, brittle JSON with inline
Javascript.
Need tooling like bolt & testing!
- generic PERMISSION_DENIED if
rule fails: need duplicate
validation logic on clients

21. 21
Reliability
Lessons learned
Backed by Google Cloud
Platform and very reliable.
SLA has 99.95% uptime,
but in reality it’s better.
Downtime
+ Google will fix it
- still hurts; no control
- partial downtime (e.g. functions)
might lead to temporary data
inconsistencies
→ use db triggers carefully!
Strategy: Switch app to maintenance
mode in sync with Firebase outages
Backups
- No auto-backup for auth data

22. 22
Customization
Lessons learned
A lot you get out of the box is
very basic but takes you a
long way.
- Emails like “Reset password”
provided multi-language,
but basic, no customization
→ Eventually
replace
vs

23. 23
Build
integrations
Lessons learned
Setting up support for API
keys for 3rd party access
fast and simple.
Build an integration with
greenhouse ATS in one week.
- Add API key related rules
- Separate Firebase project
- HTTP Functions (express)
Authenticate as API key user
admin.initializeApp({
credential: admin.credential.cert(serviceAccount),
databaseURL: "https://databaseName.firebaseio.com",
databaseAuthVariableOverride: {
uid: "API-KEY"
}
});

24. 24
Access from
China
& some corporate networks
Lessons learned
- Great Firewall actively blocks
requests to Google API
- SDK communicates with
Google APIs for Authentication
and Websocket negotiation
(cannot customize endpoints using SDK)
- Currently, candidates from
China cannot access our
solution

25. 25
Know your tools’ benefits & trade-offs.
SimplicityControl

26. 26
Works for us at
our current stage!
1. Small team can deliver scalable, reliable
product across multiple platforms.
2. No infrastructure headaches
3. Cheap *Less than 100円/mo

27. 27
Closing thought
“Empowerment of creators”
ML & Blockchain & X will eventually see similar tools.
Web2.0 / Wordpress
Bloggers
Youtube / Vimeo
VJays
AWS / Azure / Google Cloud
Accessible Infrastructure
Firebase / AWS Amplify
Accessible development

28. 28
Create!

29. 29