Learn Firebase for Android Development from Scratch, a beginner guide.

Introduction

Firebase is a BaaS (Backend as a Service) platform provided by Google. It gives all the backend functionality like authentication, servers, or databases. Simplifies the backend so that developers can focus on the front-end.

Key Features of Firebase

• Cross Platform: Work with Android, Web, IOS and Unity.
• Safe & Secure: Provides build securities for project.
• Realtime database & Firebase: Stores and sync data between users in real-time.
• Push Notification: Send targeted notifications to users.

Implementation in Android Studio

First, open Firebase Console, create your account (select Google Analytics) and create your new project. Then move to the next step.

Step 1: Connect Firebase to Your App

Firebase provides two ways to integrate: via Firebase Assistance or Manually. Let's go with Firebase Assistance as it is straightforward.

• 1. Open your Project open Firebase Assistance Tool> Firebase.
• 2. Choose a service, such as Authentication, click on connect to firebase.
• 3. Click on authenticate using google, now connect with your google account and choose the firebase project you just created.
• 4. Now, click on add sdk to your project, accept the changes. It will add necessary dependencies to your project.

If the above steps don't work. add the following dependencies:

dependencies {
    implementation platform('com.google.firebase:firebase-bom:32.1.1') // Firebase BOM
    implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics-ktx'       // Analytics KTX
}

Now, open your build.gradle.kts (Module level), add the following line:

plugins {
    alias(libs.plugins.android.application) apply false
    alias(libs.plugins.jetbrains.kotlin.android) apply false

    id("com.google.gms:google-services:4.4.0") //Add this line
}

Now, Inside your build.gradle.kts (project level), add the google plugin:

plugins {
    alias(libs.plugins.android.application)
    alias(libs.plugins.jetbrains.kotlin.android)

    id( "com.google.gms.google-services")//Add this line
}

Now, sync your project. Then go to the Firebase Console, download the google-service.json file, add this file in your project's app/ directory

Now, you are Ready to use Firebase in your Project.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed the implementation of Firebase into your project. In the next article we will see some practical uses of Firebase like Authentication, so stay tuned.