Trying to manage your business data within a spreadsheet is pretty annoying. Whether you are a small marketing agency monitoring leads in Google Spreadsheets, an entrepreneur keeping thousands of data rows in Excel, or your range anywhere in between – data management can get sloppy and disordered.
As the database starts increasing, you quickly face the limitations of a basic spreadsheet such as unresponsiveness, slow loading time, arranging burps that generate hard-to-spot formula errors, etc.
It is possible that you might have experienced some of these hurdles and are searching for the best solution to address them. You have noticed that dozens of online database management solutions are out there.
If you choose AWS (Amazon Web Services), it has a couple of database offerings like Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) and Amazon DynamoDB. From Google, you will get Firebase which offers many features as a back-end development tool for Web and Mobile apps.
It mitigates development workload and time and is also a perfect prototyping tool.
In this post, we will understand Google Firebase, Cloud Firestore, how to create a Firebase account, and how to build a Google Cloud Firestore Database. So, let’s get going.
What is Google Firebase?
Google Firebase is a platform that offers active Backend as a Service (BaaS) to develop fully dynamic Mobile and Web applications.
The concept of Firebase is simple. While developing a client-side application with JS or any of its frameworks, Google Firebase can transform this into a serverless app immediately. It also removes the need for database management by yourself.
Therefore, using Firebase means integrating a ready-made backend into the code to make it completely dynamic. So there is no need to write back-end code from scratch and give a fully functional one.
When it comes to security, it also has built-in security regulations that make it a reliable data and server controller.
What is Cloud Firestore?
Firestore is a NoSQL database hosted on a Cloud platform that stores and synchronizes data among users and devices on a global scale.
Google Cloud Firestore offers you live syncing as well as offline support with efficient data queries. Integrating Cloud Firestore with the other Firebase products facilitates you to develop truly serverless mobile and web apps.
How to create a Firebase Account?
#1. Get Going
Go to https://firebase.google.com/ and click on the ‘Get Started’ button.
#2. Create a Project
Once you get started with the Firebase, the next step you need to follow is to create a project. So click on the ‘Create a Project’ button.
The next step is assigning a name to your project.
You can enable Google Analytics but for now, make it disabled if you just want to analyze the service.
#3. Set up Private Key File
The next step is to set up a private key that is required once you begin with writing code and for access to your Firebase Database.
Go to Project Settings. For that, click on the Setting icon next to ‘Project Overview’ and click on ‘Project settings’.
Next, go to the ‘Service accounts’ tab and click on the ‘Generate new private key’ button. It will let you download the JSON file.
Click on the ‘Generate key’ button and save the JSON file in your local system.
How to build a Cloud Firestore Database?
#1. Create a database
Now you have an account and private key. The next is to build a sample database using Google Cloud Firestore. Click on the ‘Firestore Database’ tab from the sidebar menu and then click on the ‘Create database’ button.
Watch out for the dialogue box and finish the database building process by first clicking on the ‘Next’ button and then the ‘Enable’ button.
How to create a Collection and Document?
#1. Create a database
Click on the ‘Start collection’ option to build a new Collection to store all the documents.
For example, let’s name the Collection ‘Laptops’.
Click on the ‘Next’ button and include some documents in the collection. By default, Firebase assigns ‘auto-ID’ in the Document ID.
There should be some fields in the Document. So enter something like the below.
Let’s add one more field in the document which is ‘Model Number: 20KGS8ML00’.
Bingo! No more than that!
Summing Up
As you may have noticed, you can save a lot of time and mitigate latency with Google Cloud Firebase. While it’s keenly developing, it already empowered multiple mobile and web apps on the internet.
If you are not sure to use it for any compound project, you can begin with a small one. You will discover some useful practicals in the docs to know how it performs.