Introducing Cloud Firestore: Our New Document Database for Apps

Alex Dufetel

Product Manager

Today we're excited to launch Cloud Firestore, a fully-managed NoSQL document database for mobile and web app development. It's designed to easily store and sync app data at global scale, and it's now available in beta.

Key features of Cloud Firestore include:

• Documents and collections with powerful querying
• iOS, Android, and Web SDKs with offline data access
• Real-time data synchronization
• Automatic, multi-region data replication with strong consistency
• Node, Python, Go, and Java server SDKs

And of course, we've aimed for the simplicity and ease-of-use that is always top priority for Firebase, while still making sure that Cloud Firestore can scale to power even the largest apps.

Optimized for app development

Managing app data is still hard; you have to scale servers, handle intermittent connectivity, and deliver data with low latency.

We've optimized Cloud Firestore for app development, so you can focus on delivering value to your users and shipping better apps, faster. Cloud Firestore:

• Synchronizes data between devices in real-time. Our Android, iOS, and Javascript SDKs sync your app data almost instantly. This makes it incredibly easy to build reactive apps, automatically sync data across devices, and build powerful collaborative features -- and if you don't need real-time sync, one-time reads are a first-class feature.

• Uses collections and documents to structure and query data. This data model is familiar and intuitive for many developers. It also allows for expressive queries. Queries scale with the size of your result set, not the size of your data set, so you'll get the same performance fetching 1 result from a set of 100, or 100,000,000.

• Enables offline data access via a powerful, on-device database. This local database means your app will function smoothly, even when your users lose connectivity. This offline mode is available on Web, iOS and Android.

• Enables serverless development. Cloud Firestore's client-side SDKs take care of the complex authentication and networking code you'd normally need to write yourself. Then, on the backend, we provide a powerful set of security rules so you can control access to your data. Security rules let you control which users can access which documents, and let you apply complex validation logic to your data as well. Combined, these features allow your mobile app to connect directly to your database.

• Integrates with the rest of the Firebase platform. You can easily configure Cloud Functions to run custom code whenever data is written, and our SDKs automatically integrate with Firebase Authentication, to help you get started quickly.

Putting the 'Cloud' in Cloud Firestore

As you may have guessed from the name, Cloud Firestore was built in close collaboration with the Google Cloud Platform team.

This means it's a fully managed product, built from the ground up to automatically scale. Cloud Firestore is a multi-region replicated database that ensures once data is committed, it's durable even in the face of unexpected disasters. Not only that, but despite being a distributed database, it's also strongly consistent, removing tricky edge cases to make building apps easier regardless of scale.

It also means that delivering a great server-side experience for backend developers is a top priority. We're launching SDKs for Java, Go, Python, and Node.js today, with more languages coming in the future.

Another database?

Over the last 3 years Firebase has grown to become Google's app development platform; it now has 16 products to build and grow your app. If you've used Firebase before, you know we already offer a database, the Firebase Realtime Database, which helps with some of the challenges listed above.

The Firebase Realtime Database, with its client SDKs and real-time capabilities, is all about making app development faster and easier. Since its launch, it has been adopted by hundred of thousands of developers, and as its adoption grew, so did usage patterns. Developers began using the Realtime Database for more complex data and to build bigger apps, pushing the limits of the JSON data model and the performance of the database at scale. Cloud Firestore is inspired by what developers love most about the Firebase Realtime Database while also addressing its key limitations like data structuring, querying, and scaling.

So, if you're a Firebase Realtime Database user today, we think you'll love Cloud Firestore. However, this does not mean that Cloud Firestore is a drop-in replacement for the Firebase Realtime Database. For some use cases, it may make sense to use the Realtime Database to optimize for cost and latency, and it's also easy to use both databases together. You can read a more in-depth comparison between the two databases here.

We're continuing development on both databases and they'll both be available in our console and documentation.

Get started!

Cloud Firestore enters public beta starting today. If you're comfortable using a beta product you should give it a spin on your next project! Here are some of the companies and startups who are already building with Cloud Firestore:

Get started by visiting the database tab in your Firebase console. For more details, see the documentation, pricing, code samples, performance limitations during beta, and view our open source iOS and JavaScript SDKs on GitHub.

We can't wait to see what you build and hear what you think of Cloud Firestore!

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Introducing Cloud Functions for Firebase

Brendan Lim

Product Manager

Firebase started with the belief that apps could be built with mostly client code since it was, in many instances, easier and faster. However, there are still some cases where server code is needed, such as executing trusted code, authenticating to a third party API, or running battery intensive operations. In these instances, you had to stand up your own server —  until now.

Today we are excited to announce the beta launch of Cloud Functions for Firebase. It lets you write small pieces of JavaScript, deploy them to Google's Cloud infrastructure, and execute them in response to events from throughout the Firebase ecosystem. This has been the most requested feature since Firebase launched. The ability to extend and connect Firebase features using Cloud Functions makes Firebase more powerful, allowing you to do even more with your app without having to think about servers.

Cloud Functions is a versatile tool for building your mobile app. Here are a just a few of the many tasks you can perform with the integrations available at launch:

Firebase Analytics integration lets you trigger a function when a specific conversion event is fired. You can create functions to automate growth and retention workflows for your mobile apps, all without ever needing to update your client code.

• Send a notification with a coupon code to users who have just completed a purchase
• Send a survey request to users after they upgrade their app

Firebase Authentication integration lets you trigger a function when a new user is created or deleted.

• Send an email to welcome new users immediately after they sign up
• Clean up user associated data from your Realtime Database when a user account is deleted

Firebase Realtime Database integration lets you trigger a function when data is created, updated, or deleted at a specific path in the database.

• Send a notification using FCM when data is written to the database
• Moderate and remove abusive language from data written to the database

Cloud Storage integration lets you trigger a function when an object is written, updated, or deleted within a particular storage bucket.

• Resize and convert images when a new image has been uploaded to your Cloud Storage bucket
• Moderate abusive images uploaded to Cloud Storage using the Cloud Vision API

HTTP endpoint integration gives your Cloud Function a URL that can be used as a webhook. These functions are triggered when a request is made to their own unique, secure URLs.

• Post new GitHub commits to a Slack channel
• Process in-app payments using Stripe

We'll continue to add more integrations in the future.

"We were early testers of Cloud Functions for Firebase and were excited to see how easy it was to extend the Realtime Database to export data and integrate with other services."
- Erling Mårtensson, Master Architect, Sony

Firebase SDK and tooling

Cloud Functions for Firebase provides a first-class experience for Firebase developers, built on top of Google Cloud Functions. Cloud Functions are single-purpose JavaScript functions that are executed in a secure, managed Node.js environment. The Firebase SDK for Cloud Functions gives you an API that allows you to choose an event source (such as writes to Firebase Realtime Database at a specific data location) and implement a function that triggers on every matching event. Our SDK also works with TypeScript to support code completion and help you catch syntax errors early.

The SDK works in tandem with the Firebase CLI to provide a seamless experience when deploying your functions. This tight integration allows you to deploy all of your functions using only a single command.

Pricing

Cloud Functions is available on all Firebase pricing plans, including our free tier. The free tier allows you to quickly experiment and try out integration with other Firebase products. For our Blaze plan, you only pay for what you use. Blaze customers also receive a monthly allotment of free usage for Cloud Functions.

"Thanks to Cloud Functions for Firebase, I built a company with no permanent employees but myself (so far), with no serious scaling concerns, and no major costs maintaining or upgrading the backend as the app grows. It's something of a miracle."

- Paul Budnitz, Founder/CEO, Wuu

Create and deploy your first Cloud Function today

Getting started is easy! Walk through our step-by-step codelab, which takes you through setting up your first Cloud Function. You can refer to our full documentation for all the details.

We can't wait to see what you build!

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Working Closer with Google Cloud Platform

James Tamplin

Product Manager

Since expanding Firebase to become Google's mobile application development platform at Google I/O last year, our amazing community of developers has created over 1 million Firebase projects.

We're thrilled so many of you use and trust us. While Firebase is a full suite of products for building and growing apps, we know that some apps need more than we offer out-of-the-box. That's why we're bringing Firebase much closer to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to serve even the most demanding applications, whether you're a new startup or a large enterprise.

Product Integrations

Firebase already shares the same account and billing system as GCP, so you can attach Firebase services to your GCP project and vice-versa. This makes for powerful combinations, such as exporting raw event data from Firebase Analytics into BigQuery for ad-hoc analysis. Starting today, we're beginning to share products too.

First, Firebase developers have been asking for ways to extend their app's functionality without spinning up a server, and Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you do just that. Cloud Functions is our new event-driven serverless compute offering that enters public beta today. The infrastructure is shared between Cloud and Firebase, allowing you to invoke a function or access resources from throughout the Cloud/Firebase ecosystem. For more information, read the announcement on the Firebase blog and Cloud blog.

Next, we're bringing Firebase Storage closer to Cloud Storage. Firebase Storage launched 10 months ago, and lets you easily upload and download files from your device directly to Cloud Storage. Previously we gave you a single bucket for your files. Now we're fully aligning the two products and letting you use any Cloud Storage bucket, from any global region and from any storage class, all straight from the Firebase SDK. To reflect this alignment we're renaming the product Cloud Storage for Firebase. Read more in our blog post.

Stay tuned for more product integrations in the future as Firebase continues to provide direct client-side access to GCP infrastructure through our iOS, Web, and Android SDKs.

Streamlined Terms of Service

We love lawyers almost as much as developers, so we're extending GCP's Terms of Service to cover several Firebase products. This makes Firebase and Cloud simpler to evaluate and use together. Products to be covered include: Authentication, Hosting, Storage, Functions, and Test Lab. Our streamlined Terms of Service will take effect soon.

The Big Picture

Firebase brings together the best of Google on mobile -- whether that's Google's flagship advertising solutions like AdMob and AdWords, or Google's analytics expertise in the form of Firebase Analytics.

Google Cloud Platform lets you to benefit from the institutional knowledge Google has developed from almost two decades of running global-scale computing infrastructure.

By bringing together the ease-of-use of Firebase with the full-range of GCP infrastructure offerings, we're better able to serve you up and down the stack. If you're a startup using Firebase to quickly get to market, you can now easily scale into a full public cloud. If you're an existing business running on GCP who wants to ship a mobile app, we've got you covered too.

We can't wait to see what you build with Firebase and Google Cloud Platform!

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Top sessions for mobile developers at Google Cloud Next 17

James Tamplin

Product Manager

Google Cloud Next 17 is three weeks away! It's a great event for anyone looking for insight on Firebase and mobile development. Scanning through the session catalog, here's a sampling of the must-see sessions that mobile developers should attend.

If you're a mobile development rookie, your first stop should be "What to consider when developing mobile apps," in which Laurence Moroney, Google staff developer advocate, surfaces some of the gotchas of developing for mobile devices such as poor connectivity and offline devices, access control and battery life.


Then, march on over to "Zero to App: Live coding an app with Firebase and GCP," which will be a very cool live demo. Watch in awe as Googlers Mike McDonald, Jen Tong and Frank van Puffelen do simultaneous live coding of an app across both iOS and Android. You'll leave with an appreciation of how easy it is to code with Firebase, and how easy it is to scale with GCP.


For mobile devs that just want to focus on delivering a great UX, "serverless" development helps remove a big set of concerns from their plate. If that describes you, go see "Google Cloud Functions and Firebase," with Firebase team members Thomas Bouldin, software engineer and Brendan Lim, product manager, who will show you how to extend Firebase backend services with Google Cloud Functions to make the next generation of mobile and web apps.


Once you've built that awesome mobile app, you'll want analytics to understand how people use it. But building analytics infrastructure can be painful, and the same goes for log ingestion pipelines, and managing a data warehouse. We've got you covered. In "Gaining deeper insights from Firebase Analytics with Google BigQuery," Google developer advocates Todd Kerpelman and Arun Venkatesan will show you how to use Firebase Analytics and augment it with BigQuery and data visualization tools like Data Studio.


Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. For the full story, check out the schedule for a full listing of the keynotes, bootcamps and over 200 breakout sessions. Hope to see you there!

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pCloud – An Innovative Cloud Storage Service with Twists

After ‘Cloud Computing’ revolution, we have seen dawn of different cloud-based file storage services, even though a few of them managed to grab the spotlight. And, services those grabbed attention from users had something unique to offer. If you have a glance on popular cloud storage services, you can see that each of them had redefined aspects of cloud computing by introducing innovative practical applications. Today, what we would like to introduce is such a useful, innovative and reliable online file storage service that you can depend upon for professional & personal kinds of purposes – pCloud. There were several factors in pCloud that helped us to conclude that pCloud is pretty different from other services available in tech world, such as simplicity, security, uniqueness of features etc. Despite having its inception in 2013, pCloud has found this one year to create an outstanding impression among audience.

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