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Firebase in a Weekend: iOS

Free Course

Building a Realtime Chat App

Related Nanodegree Program

Introduction to Programming

In collaboration with
  • Google

About this course

In this course, you’ll learn how to use Firebase. Firebase is app development platform that provides developers a variety of tools and a scalable infrastructure to build high quality apps.

We’ll begin by showing you how easy it is to read and write almost any data to Firebase. After that, we’ll teach you how to allow users to login, have data associated with them and send them notifications. You’ll learn how to use Firebase’s Security and Rules language to secure and add permissions to your data.

Firebase Remote Config gives you the ability to tune and customize your app without having to publish a new version. Finally we’ll give you a brief overview of Firebase Analytics so you can collect data from the start.

Got extra time this weekend? As a bonus, you will write your own Cloud Function for Firebase that makes chat more fun by adding emojis to FriendlyChat conversations. Cloud Functions for Firebase integrates the Firebase platform by letting you write code that responds to events and invokes functionality exposed by other Firebase features.

By the end of this course you will have an iOS application that can store and share data between different users in real time as well as authenticate and authorize those users.

What you will learn

  1. Saturday
    • Why Choose Firebase
    • Creating a Firebase Project
    • Reading and Writing using Firebase Realtime Database and Authentication
  2. Sunday
    • Storing Data
    • Leveraging Analytics to Improve User Engagement
    • Notifications and Remote Config
  3. Monday
    • Introduction to Cloud Functions for Firebase
    • Deploy Cloud Functions using the Firebase CLI
    • Extend mobile app functionality with server-side code

Prerequisites and requirements

You need to have proficiency in building an iOS mobile application, including experience in basic command line, calling a web or cloud API, working with the view controller life cycle, using multiple view controllers, and working with UITableViewController (iOS Developer Nanodegree or equivalent level). Familiarity working with a web service from iOS, using Core Data, or building apps that use databases will also be helpful.

See the Technology Requirements for using Udacity.

Why take this course?

If you are an iOS developer and your app needs any of the following features:

  • Online data storage
  • Real-time synchronization between many users
  • Authentication for Email/Password as well as OAuth providers
  • Data permissions and security
  • Offline access to data

This is the course for you!

Firebase is a gentle but very powerful introduction to storing and managing data. With just a few lines of code, you can read and write almost any data you could dream up from your own custom Firebase backend.

Furthermore, Firebase has a generous free plan that lets you start making hosted apps with multiple users immediately.

Learn with the best.

  • Frank van Puffelen
    Frank van Puffelen

    Instructor

  • Laurence Moroney
    Laurence Moroney

    Instructor

  • Jarrod Parkes
    Jarrod Parkes

    Instructor

  • Jennifer Person
    Jennifer Person

    Course Developer