Firebase is a Backend as a Service (BaaS) that provides an advantage to mobile developers who use React Native for developing mobile applications. As a React Native developer, by using Firebase you can start building an MVP, keeping the costs low and prototyping the application pretty fast.
In this tutorial, we will be learning how to get started by integrating Firebase with a React Native application. We will also create a small application from scratch with the help of Firebase & React Native to see how they work together.
Getting Started
Firebase is a platform that got acquired by Google and has a healthy and active community. Most users in this community are web and mobile developers as Firebase can help with mobile analytics, push notification, crash reporting and out of the box provides email as well as social authentication.
To get started, you will need a target mobile OS, whether you choose to go with iOS or Android or both. Please refer to React Native official documentation if you are setting up React Native development environment for the first time. You will need sdk tools and Android Studio especially to setup a developer environment for Android. For iOS, you only need Xcode installed on your macOS. You will also need to have:
- Nodejs (
>= 8.x.x) and npm/yarn installed - react-native-cli (
>= 2.0.1)
React Native is distributed as two npm packages, react-native-cli, and react-native. We are going to use the react-native-cli to generate an app. Begin by installing react-native-cli:
npm install -s react-native-cli
Now, let’s create a new React Native project called “rnFirebaseDemo”:
react-native init rnFirebaseDemo
When the above command is done running, traverse into the project directory using cd rnFirebaseDemo. Now, let’s check if everything is working correctly and our React Native application has been properly initialized by running one of the following commands:
# on macOS
react-native run-ios
# For Windows/Unix users
react-native run-android
This command will run the default screen as shown below in an iOS simulator or Android emulator but it will take a few moments since we are running it for the first time.