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Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

firebase.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#101

Post by Andrex »

rutierut wrote: post #80
subpixel wrote: post #48

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 Mon…

Nr. 3 would be the end for me, I still don't get why they haven't implemented this, it exist for Ios and Android, why not web!!

I understand wanting a native version, but wouldn't it be relatively straightforward to connect to something like PouchDB for web persistence?

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#102

Post by aphextron »

Quite exciting. I just recently used Firebase for the first time in years and I was absolutely amazed at the level of productivity. The best part is how seamless and brain-dead everything is compared to AWS. Also the client side JS library for database storage makes handling application state a dream. Auth and static hosting require almost no configuration, and the only thing I couldn't use firebase for was server side compute based tasks.

This is the final missing piece will allow me to develop an entire app on the google cloud with no more server admin. Can't wait.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#103

Post by hbhakhra »

nivco wrote: post #33
tedmiston wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sadly no outbound networking requests on the free tier. In my opinion that is a critical use case for a tool like this. This could be a non-starter if there's really no way try it for outbound requests without paying $25 / month. Hopefully I'm misunderstanding the pricing page. Edit: The fine print for the custom plan: > 3 The Spark plan only allows outbound network requests to Google owned services. On the Blaze…

To clear things up: You Can use the Blaze plan which is pay-as-you-go and starts at 0$ and has a large free tier. External requests are disabled on projects that do not have billing enabled but you can have billing enabled and still be within the free tier of usage. The Flame plan is the "fixed cost" plan starting at 25$ and also includes external requests.

That should really be clarified on the pricing page because I think many people misunderstood that

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#104

Post by curun1r »

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…

Well...there's ways to call into Go, Rust and C++ from Node with very little performance penalty. Rust and C++ can even build native Node modules with no need to even write a single line of glue code in JavaScript. If you need performance, Node gives you quite a few options.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#105

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

brendanlim wrote: post #3

(Cloud Functions for Firebase PM here) We’ve been developing this product for years, and we’ve had it in private alpha testing for well over a year, so we’re incredibly excited to finally take the wrappings off and let all of you try it. Firebase has always focused on empowering you all to build extraordinary experiences for your users, without needing to worry about building common infrastructure. While we’ve made b…

Do you plan to introduce something similar to AWS step machines?

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#106

Post by CamelCaseName »

joshschreuder wrote: post #90
ealexhudson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The support comes from a genii. Make sure not to ask "Is the limit really 5?" with your first question.

Just ask for an infinite number of support questions

Support: No.

4 questions remaining

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#107

Post by primitivesuave »

I have been waiting for this feature for a long time. This was the final missing piece for building an entire software product entirely on Firebase. Right now, I'm running servers on Google Cloud that use firebase-queue to handle server-side requests like payments and restricted actions. Google Cloud Functions would have been overkill because it would involve setting up a whole new workflow for the team. This is perfect because it is integrated to the CLI and easy for anyone to use.

All they need to work out now is educating their customers on the benefits of using Firebase over building a backend from scratch, especially in the trade-off between developer productivity and not owning your data.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#108

Post by tedmiston »

habosa wrote: post #32
tedmiston wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sadly no outbound networking requests on the free tier. In my opinion that is a critical use case for a tool like this. This could be a non-starter if there's really no way try it for outbound requests without paying $25 / month. Hopefully I'm misunderstanding the pricing page. Edit: The fine print for the custom plan: > 3 The Spark plan only allows outbound network requests to Google owned services. On the Blaze…

As mentioned in some other comments, the restriction on outbound requests without a billing account is to prevent abuse. I'm sure you could imagine some bad behavior if Cloud Functions allowed anyone to spin up a few million executions per month and hit any arbitrary web services.

Sure, but many services with free tiers have already solved this problem by requiring a CC even without billing.

Re: Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

#110

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #105
brendanlim wrote: post #3

(Cloud Functions for Firebase PM here) We’ve been developing this product for years, and we’ve had it in private alpha testing for well over a year, so we’re incredibly excited to finally take the wrappings off and let all of you try it. Firebase has always focused on empowering you all to build extraordinary experiences for your users, without needing to worry about building common infrastructure. While we’ve made b…

Do you plan to introduce something similar to AWS step machines?

step functions
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