Within the past two years, Firebase has gone from a nice to have tool set to an essential set of tools for mobile app development in my opinion. The increasing array of product offerings, the easy to use SDKs and an extensive documentation makes Firebase Mobile Platform indispensable for modern app development. Moreover, given the deep dedication that the Firebase team is demonstrating to the platform, one can expect that Firebase will only continue to get bigger, better and easier.

It is a known fact, however, that developers learn more from practical example than by devouring a buffet of documentation. This book is written to present a practical, step by step example of working with Firebase. I have always believed that mobile development is best learned by building a full featured app end to end instead of skimming through isolated Hello World apps. This book is centered around creating a functioning Notepad App called Pronto Notepad.

The content of this book was originally released as an Udemy Video Course where I showed how to work with Firebase Authentication, Realtime Database, and Storage. The questions and the feedbacks I received from that course all centered around the whys. Students appreciated the opportunity to learn how things are done with Firebase, but they also wanted to know why certain things are done differently. All those questions centered around the blurry line between FirebaseUI Auth and Firebase Authentication and the persistent confusion between NoSQL and relational database.

In this book, I provided sufficient context, explanations, and example and I have also included some Firebase products which were either not existing at the time of the course recording or which I have not had the chance to work with extensively at the time but which I have now used in numerous projects. These products include Firebase Functions, Firebase Hosting, Cloud Configuration and more.

This book is for you if you want a no fluff, to the point, practical Firebase tutorial. The book comes with a complete, fully functioning source code as well as a chapter by chapter source code.