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Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

firebase.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#41

Post by [deleted] »

skybrian wrote: post #39
habosa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty different model, so not really an apples-to-apples comparison. Cloud Functions are bits of code that run in response to events, whether those are events from Google Cloud / Firebase or HTTP triggers. These functions scale up and down as the event load changes. App Engine is a more traditional PaaS offering where you upload and entire web app, something you might otherwise run on your own server or a bar…

Okay, but App Engine also scales up and down on demand. And an HTTP trigger is just an HTTP request; it can be stateless if you like. So that sounds an awful lot like a function in the cloud. The part I'm not clear about is whether you can send non-HTTP events to App Engine or not? It seems like it might be useful.

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#42

Post by lotyrin »

fiatjaf wrote: post #38
keithwinstein wrote: post #21

This looks like a worthy competitor to AWS Lambda, but I'm disappointed by the unalterable limit of 400 concurrent invocations of a function. (The "Quotas" page says "Max concurrent functions" is 400, with "Can be increased" as "No." https://cloud.google.com/functions/quotas ) One of the cool things about AWS Lambda is that you can use it as a short-term supercomputer with thousands of threads. We (Stanford/UCSD ExCa…

Really, which percentage of clients will need more than that?

Any service with more than 400 users that want to run a batch process for each user in constant time with respect to number of users.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#43

Post by mbleigh »

metaphyze wrote: post #37
keithwinstein wrote: post #21

This looks like a worthy competitor to AWS Lambda, but I'm disappointed by the unalterable limit of 400 concurrent invocations of a function. (The "Quotas" page says "Max concurrent functions" is 400, with "Can be increased" as "No." https://cloud.google.com/functions/quotas ) One of the cool things about AWS Lambda is that you can use it as a short-term supercomputer with thousands of threads. We (Stanford/UCSD ExCa…

Another disappointing limitation is being restricted to Node.js. AWS Lambda lets you write your code in Node.js, Python, Java, or C#. This is particularly useful for tuning your Lambdas based on their expected usage. If you have a Lambda that is being constantly invoked, it might be better to write it in Java. It has a longer start up time but has better performance after the initial startup. However, if your Lambda…

Firebase engineer here.

Additional languages will come, but we're starting with Node.js. We'd rather take the approach of doing one language really well than a bunch of languages with a poor developer experience.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#44

Post by [deleted] »

metaphyze wrote: post #37
keithwinstein wrote: post #21

This looks like a worthy competitor to AWS Lambda, but I'm disappointed by the unalterable limit of 400 concurrent invocations of a function. (The "Quotas" page says "Max concurrent functions" is 400, with "Can be increased" as "No." https://cloud.google.com/functions/quotas ) One of the cool things about AWS Lambda is that you can use it as a short-term supercomputer with thousands of threads. We (Stanford/UCSD ExCa…

Another disappointing limitation is being restricted to Node.js. AWS Lambda lets you write your code in Node.js, Python, Java, or C#. This is particularly useful for tuning your Lambdas based on their expected usage. If you have a Lambda that is being constantly invoked, it might be better to write it in Java. It has a longer start up time but has better performance after the initial startup. However, if your Lambda…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#45

Post by rationalthug »

mbleigh wrote: post #43
metaphyze wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another disappointing limitation is being restricted to Node.js. AWS Lambda lets you write your code in Node.js, Python, Java, or C#. This is particularly useful for tuning your Lambdas based on their expected usage. If you have a Lambda that is being constantly invoked, it might be better to write it in Java. It has a longer start up time but has better performance after the initial startup. However, if your Lambda…

Firebase engineer here. Additional languages will come, but we're starting with Node.js. We'd rather take the approach of doing one language really well than a bunch of languages with a poor developer experience.

How does Cloud Functions for Firebase handle node modules with native code add-ons?

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#46

Post by fiatjaf »

lotyrin wrote: post #42
fiatjaf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, which percentage of clients will need more than that?

Any service with more than 400 users that want to run a batch process for each user in constant time with respect to number of users.

Right, how many of those do exist with an internal architecture that will fit the Lambda model?

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#47

Post by Kiro »

I don't really understand how to use this to build a real backend. Everything seem to be revolving around reactions (new thing happening in the DB, file uploaded etc) but isn't the more common use case that you actually want to call the function directly?

I'm building a simple React Native/Expo app where I want users to join random chat rooms so I obviously need some logic to delegate this process. Is Firebase/Cloud Functions something I can consider?

My first thought was "oh, maybe I can let my app call the function directly to add the user to a random chat room" but I don't see how that is possible.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#48

Post by subpixel »

This was a long time coming, so congrats first.

I also recently read this from an experienced Firebase developer: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/firebase-the-great-the-meh-a...

Interestingly, he lists several things that he things Firebase needs in order to be awesome, and server-functions is last on the list:

> 1. Real querying capabilities. Search, joins, the whole enchilada.

> 2. Some sort of references likes MongoDB or RethinkDB.

> 3. Real offline persistence with Javascript.

> 4. Give me moar analytics.

> 5. A cache API.

> 6. Some way of adding server side code without needing to resort to a VPS.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#49

Post by mbleigh »

Kiro wrote: post #47

I don't really understand how to use this to build a real backend. Everything seem to be revolving around reactions (new thing happening in the DB, file uploaded etc) but isn't the more common use case that you actually want to call the function directly? I'm building a simple React Native/Expo app where I want users to join random chat rooms so I obviously need some logic to delegate this process. Is Firebase/Cloud…

You can definitely do this! There are two ways that readily come to mind:

1. Use the Realtime Database as a communication channel to trigger a Cloud Function that then sets up the thing you need.

2. Create an HTTPS function and call it directly from your app, then do the work you need.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#50

Post by inlined »

rationalthug wrote: post #45
mbleigh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase engineer here. Additional languages will come, but we're starting with Node.js. We'd rather take the approach of doing one language really well than a bunch of languages with a poor developer experience.

How does Cloud Functions for Firebase handle node modules with native code add-ons?

Image magick's binaries are already installed on the image. Any native binary node module that has a preinstall script should work too. If you hit an unsupported syscall error, contact firebase support at firebase.google.com/contact/troubleshooting and we'll triage.
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