Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend

Post by chrisohara » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 1:45 AM UTC

rralian wrote: post #120

sjs wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be at the same level as disassembling binary code w/ IDA or what have you, but un-minifying or un-obfuscating JavaScript is not a trivial exercise by any means. (If I were in a nitpicking mood I would also point out that the source is what is fed into the minifier or obfuscator, not what comes out.)

un-minifying javascript is very trivial. you just copy and paste it into an online javascript beautifier. you won't get the original un-obfuscated source with original comments, but you'll get readable javasript that you can easily parse visually.

Post by cmelbye » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #114

Seems slightly misleading with the pitch about "no servers". More like, "proprietary Javascript framework locked to proprietary hosted cloud service, no information about pricing". Not that I begrudge anybody the chance to make some money, but along with Meteor I feel like there's a slightly deceptive nature to this kind of thing where the home page is emblazoned with "look, it's all free!" when in fact there's an un…

Post by endtime » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 5:03 AM UTC

chrisohara wrote: post #124

endtime wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you don't think Gmail has a backend...?

Of course it has a backend, but so do the Firebase apps that this entire thread is talking about. Referring to a JS app as "client-side" doesn't imply that there's no backend logic. My point is that you can't just de-obfuscate a primarily client-side JS app and replace the Firebase (or whatever) endpoints. Proprietary obfuscation is more than just variable name munging and minification..

Post by mase » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 5:34 AM UTC

pkrein wrote: post #4

I used Firebase to build thereelbox.com, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It took 2-3 hours from starting into the documentation to completed/nobugs/pushed to production. Credit for that speed goes entirely to Firebase. TheReelBox uses Firebase as a sort of API caching layer. This protects against rate limiting on the Rotten Tomatoes API, decreases request time by caching queries to the Fandango-via-YQL API, and eliminates…

Post by dasrecht » Fri, Apr 13, 2012, 6:11 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #106

pkrein wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true [backs up data]. the system will also auto-recover by falling back to the RT/YT/YQL APIs if someone does that, though pages will load significantly slower and Rotten Tomatoes will throw a bunch of rate-limiting errors until Firebase is repopulated.

I'll be honest, it's kind of fun to go to [REDACTED URL] and delete the list of movies and watch them repopulate as people load the site... Sorry, I'll stop. Seriously though, this is a neat toy/prototyping platform, but they desperately need to add some security for it to be really useful.