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No, really. Full disclosure: I'm not a developer and I was able to setup and c","image":{"id":"e9q7ffedfbvm3m21kc5pxvf9h","url":"static/cjeqgfkqennn60199707yp1fb/firebase.jpg"},"posts_tags":[{"tag":{"id":"z8dz890np7oyvt3d7vz2","name":"Firebase"}}],"date":"May 1, 2018","html":"
Firebase is the jam. No, really. Full disclosure: I'm not a developer and I was able to setup and create a simple web app with Firebase in less than an hour. Firebase really is that easy to use.
\nIn this tutorial, I'll save you some headaches by mentioning a few tips that aren't covered in the Firebase docs.
\nI make the following assumptions in this tutorial:
\nAre you familiar with the MCV (model-view-controller) software design pattern?
\nReactJs advertises itself as just the view layer. So where do we put the app logic? Where do the model and controller layers belong?
\nFor starters, the architects of ReactJs were being deliberately humble. ReactJs is much more than a view layer; components are incredibly powerful.
\nNevertheless, if you want to create a ReactJs app that doesn't just reset every page refresh, then you need a database.
\nFirebase is a backend-as-a-service (BAAS). Firebase provides the backend (database and user authentication) for your app so that you can focus on the frontend aspects. This is particularly advantageous in my case because I wouldn't even know how to setup a backend for a ReactJs app.
\nFirebase stores your app's data as key-value pairs that are accessible with a simple API call.
\nLet's build a quick-and-dirty React app that uses Firebase as a backend.
\nWhat's the bare minimum that's needed to integrate firebase into your React app?
\nRather just fiddle with a sample React Firebase project than fiddle with a tutorial? Clone this repo.
\nAdd these lines to your component:
\nimport firebase from 'firebase';\nimport reactfire from 'reactfire';
\nAnd make sure that Firebase and Reactfire are installed:
\nnpm install firebase reactfire --save
\nChances are you have a gmail account, so you don't even need to sign up for anything. Just go to firebase.google.com and click sign up.
\n\nYou'll be prompted to create a new project. Click \"Add Firebase to your web app\" and Firebase will provide you with API keys.
\n\nGreat, we have our apiKey, authDomain, and databaseURL. Now what?
\nAdd this config object to your ReactJs component. Now our component looks something like:
\nimport React from 'react';\nimport ReactDOM from 'react-dom';\nimport firebase from 'firebase';\nimport reactfire from 'reactfire';\n const config = {\n apiKey: \"YOUR_API_KEY\",\n authDomain: \"YOUR_AUTH_DOMAIN\",\n databaseURL: \"YOUR_DATABASE_URL\"\n};\nfirebase.initializeApp(config);\nclass App extends React.Component { \n render() {\n return (\n <H1>Happy coding!</H1>\n );\n }\n}
\nNote: Google will tell you to add the Reactfire and FireBase scripts to your html document when you first get your API keys. This obviously isn't necessary if you're importing these libraries at the beginning of your react component with import firebase from 'firebase'.
\nI omitted the storageBucket and messagingSenderId because we won't need them for this example.
\nWhat we've done so far:
\nnpm install firebase reactfire --save
)Pushing data to Firebase is super simple.
\nThe code that interacts with Firebase will live in the React lifecycle component componentWillMount. Unremarkably, this function is called whenever our component will mount.
\nAdd the following to your React component:
\ncomponentWillMount() { \n this.firebaseRef = firebase.database().ref(\"moaningmyrtle/items\");\n}\ncomponentWillUnmount() {\n this.firebaseRef.off();\n};
\nThis code identifies the database we want to use for our app by name (\"moaningmyrtle/items\"). I just made this string up and Firebase automatically structured my database according to it. Here's what I mean:
\n\nOnce we've setup our lifecycle components, we can push data to Firebase as follows:
\npushToFirebase() {\n this.firebaseRef.push({entry: this.state.text});\n}
\nIn this situation, imagine we stored some data like a string in this.state.text. Then we called pushToFirebase() when we were ready to add data to our database.
\nLet's test everything out by rendering a controlled input field. We'll enter text and watch it be pushed to Firebase.
\nHere's what the working component will look like:
\n\nWhat's going on here?
\nevent.preventDefault();
to prevent submitting an empty input field. On line 37, we reset our input field value. The function pushToFirebase(event)
is called with an onClick
event.You can navigate to the Firebase console to confirm that the data was populated.
\nWhat we covered in this section:
\ncomponentWillMount()
lifecycle hook.this.firebaseRef.push({entry: this.state.text}).
We pushed data to firebase, now how do we retrieve it?
\nLet's rewrite our componentWillMount() lifecycle function as follows:
\ncomponentWillMount() {\n this.firebaseRef = firebase.database().ref(\"moaningmyrtle/items\");\n this.firebaseRef.on('value', function(dataSnapshot) {\n var items = [];\n dataSnapshot.forEach(function(childSnapshot) {\n var item = childSnapshot.val();\n item['.key'] = childSnapshot.key;\n items.push(item);\n }.bind(this));\n this.setState({\n items: items\n });\n }.bind(this));\n };
\nWith dataSnapshot.forEach we loop through the the javascript objects in our database. You can read more about forEach() in the Firebase docs.
\nNext, we set each entry in our database to var item as follows:
\nvar item = childSnapshot.val();
\nIn addition to having a value, each childSnapshot has a key [\".key\"]. We include the childSnapshot keys in our objects with:
\nitem['.key'] = childSnapshot.key
\nWe can use these firebase database keys to avoid that pesky Reactjs error message:
\nWarning: Each child in an array or iterator should have a unique \"key\" prop.\n
Finally, we push the item object into an arbitrarily named array called items.
\nItems will now be an array of objects resembling the following:
\nvar items = [{\n KawNwox9GH8HQmcMg45: {text: 'some text'}\n}, {\n KawNxf670d_hgcwSUZ3: {text: 'some more text'}\n}];
\nWe can display data from Firebase with map.
\n// we stored our data from Firebase in this.state.items\nconst items = this.state.items;\n// iterate through the array of objects\nconst records = items.map((items) => \n <p key={items.key}>{items.text}</p>\n);
\nSee this github repo.
","avatar":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/contentkit/static/cjeqgfkqennn60199707yp1fb/firebase.jpg"}}}}