Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

firebase.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 214 posts

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#191

Post by curiousGambler »

aeosynth wrote: post #47
pritambarhate wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an Open Source version of Firebase which we can use on our own hardware if we wish to? Vendor lock-in is the biggest fear I have with Firebase. Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting? How do we protect ourselves, if Google decides to increase the price of Firebase 3-4 times in a single day? Even…

Horizon[0] was announced yesterday; it's basically an open-source Firebase built on RethinkDB. [0]: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon

I was at ng-conf a couple weeks ago. Talking to the Firebase guy at their booth, he goes "You should talk to the RethinkDB guys, it's the same thing but open source." I got a kick out of it.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#192

Post by welanes »

kuschku wrote: post #123
welanes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for its main selling point: a realtime backend. With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. As for security - the Firebase security rules and server side authentication allow you to lock things down.

> With Firebase, Vue-Fire (Firebase bindings for Vue.js), crossfilter and chart.js, you can whip up a functional and sweet analytics dashboard or [insert pet project here] in a weekend. > It gets the headache of a backend (and user auth) out of the way. You can get the same if you use other tools. The realtime stuff is the only big thing they do most other projects don’t, and even for that there are currently several…

Sure. But now I have all this in one service. And when that pet project moves from web to a native app, Firebase has all the trappings to make it easy.

A lot of eggs in one basket admittedly, but that basket looks pretty robust for now.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#193

Post by nihonde »

asciimike wrote: post #151
nihonde wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good news for me. File storage and push messaging are particularly nice. As a user of the Firebase iOS SDK, I was wondering why the SDK was getting so stale. The Quickstart guide used deprecated Swift, didn't offer Carthage support, etc. I looked at the new docs, and I guess they ditched the old Quickstart format in favor of a bunch of examples. At least the code seems to be up to date, which is somewhat enco…

Firebase iOS engineer here: First off, I'm glad you like the new feature additions. We'd love to hear your feedback on Storage and FCM :) Secondly, I'd love Carthage support as well, but there are a few things (built into Carthage) that prevent us from adding this: 1. Carthage requires iOS 8+ (dynamic frameworks only). Firebase supports 7+, and we build static "frameworks", so we'd lose that (which is still relevant…

Understood. Dependency management for iOS is generally pretty terrible, in my experience. I suppose Apple will step in soon, and I hope they do a nice job of it.

Anyway, I continue to use (and enjoy using) Firebase for iOS and web.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#194

Post by mcv »

I intend to use Firebase as at least a temporary backend while developing my app. Maybe I'll move to a real server later, but during development it's really easy to just have some place you can shoot json at. And I can always add interaction later by having some other application listen to it.

I don't really need the actual realtime communication stuff all that much (though it might turn out to be useful), but just a lightweight place to store json is really useful.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#195

Post by rapind »

wasd wrote: post #126
toddmorey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love, love for Firebase to have a service similar to AWS Lambda to manipulate and transform data without having to maintain persistent servers.

You can use any Google Cloud product with Firebase so you have access to Cloud Functions. https://cloud.google.com/functions/

I've been eyeing this. Can we kick off a Cloud Function via Firebase Cloud Messaging?

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#196

Post by oaktowner »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #154

For Firebase/Google Cloud Platform engineer: does it mean Google Cloud Endpoints is being phased out? if i'm already using Google Cloud Endpoints, should i move to Firebase? what's the advantage?

Hi -- PM for Endpoints here.

Endpoints is going strong and will have a release later this year that adds support for hosting APIs on more of our compute offerings (Compute Engine, Container Engine, App Engine Flexible Environments). We'll also be adding features, reporting, etc.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#197

Post by oaktowner »

bikamonki wrote: post #131
mayop100 wrote: post #4

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote config…

Firebase is awesome! Realtime has become a great selling point with my clients (and a necessity for things like chat apps). However, after doing over 20 apps with Firebase I've had to combine with other PAAS due to some features missing/lacking: server-side code (event-driven like Parse had or like AWS Lambda) and better/easier search features. In the second case for instance, let's imagine a support app, it makes mo…

Google PM here. You might want to look at Google Cloud's storage offerings (both SQL and non-SQL based), as well as its compute offerings (including Cloud Functions, which is event driven). One note: Cloud Functions was just announced and is still in alpha.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#198

Post by wasd »

rapind wrote: post #195
wasd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use any Google Cloud product with Firebase so you have access to Cloud Functions. https://cloud.google.com/functions/

I've been eyeing this. Can we kick off a Cloud Function via Firebase Cloud Messaging?

Sorry, I don't know. I don't really use Firebase.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#199

Post by [deleted] »

mayop100 wrote: post #4

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote config…

[deleted]

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#200

Post by st3v3r »

pritambarhate wrote: post #32
mayop100 wrote: post #4

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote config…

Is there an Open Source version of Firebase which we can use on our own hardware if we wish to? Vendor lock-in is the biggest fear I have with Firebase. Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting? How do we protect ourselves, if Google decides to increase the price of Firebase 3-4 times in a single day? Even…

"Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting?"

You can architect your app sequester these 3rd party services on the edge, making any rewrite much easier.

Post reply on HN