FlutterFire app development

FlutterFire app development (Flutter + Firebase)

FlutterFire stands for Flutter connected with Firebase. It is the latest revolution in terms of mobile app development in Barcelona and Madrid. On their own, Google Flutter and Firebase represent the TOP mobile technological stack nowadays; and, when putting them together... they are unbeatable. With the combination of Flutter and Firebase, FlutterFire is created, obtaining a very powerful technological combination for serverless app development.

If you are thinking of building an app, you should definitely consider FlutterFire as one of your first options.

Always Flutter

As we were announcing in many of our last publications, Flutter has become one of the best frameworks to create mobile apps for iOS and Android simultaneously. At Abalit, we know that Flutter is the future and we continue working every day to make the most of it.

In addition, Google released the version 2.0 of Flutter in 2021, providing stability, reliability and extensibility to apps developed with this framework.

Any mobile application is divided into two parts: Frontend and Backend. The Front is the visual layer of our application (this is where Flutter will help us code it), and the Back is the part that is responsible for receiving, processing, and returning data. So far, we are only clear about how we are going to approach the first part, but what about the Back? How are we going to develop it? The answer is Firebase, and that's why we are here.

What is Firebase and what can we do with it?

Firebase is a set of serverless tools, also from Google like Flutter, and it will help us create and grow our application in many different terms. The following image is very descriptive, and will help us understand that working with Firebase helps us remove a fairly complex part of our application (the server) from the equation, apart from adding security and agility.

Create our application

To help us create our serverless application, Firebase has several tools such as:

• Cloud Firestore: it is a NoSQL database, great to store and synchronize data between client and server.
• ML kit: you can use machine learning (ML) to solve problems, thanks to google's experience in this field. However, this tool is still in beta.
• Cloud Functions: it will allow us to send requests directly to Google's servers so that its response is automatic.
• Authentication: authentication is a fundamental part of all applications, and this is the tool that will make it easier.
• Cloud Storage: mandatory if you need to store content such as images, audio, video, etc.
• Realtime Database: it will help us to synchronize the data of our users in real time, and it remains available even when the app is offline.

Improve the quality of our app

• Crashlytics: we will be able to get statistics about the errors that occur in our application.
• Performance Monitoring: it allows us to collect information about the performance of our application.
• Test Lab: a great tool to test our application on Google-hosted devices.

Grow our business

• Analytics: with this tool, we will benefit from our app's usage statistics.
• Predictions: thanks to the ML kit, we will be able to browse user segments according to their behavior. This will help us customize our app in order to keep our users active.
• A / B Testing: this tool allows us to evaluate the modifications that we can make in our app. For example, we can update our app and introduce a new feature only to users who open all notifications, so that we can see its impact in our application. However, it is still in beta.
• Cloud Messaging: essential to our application, as it will allow us to send push messages to our users.
• Remote Config: this tool works great with A / B Testing, as it will allow publishing updates in a scaled way.
• Dynamic Links: it will allow us to implement links on different platforms regardless of whether it has been installed before.
• App Indexing: a great tool to integrate Google Search into our app.

You can find much more detailed information at Firebase official website. And now you will think: "This is all great, but you haven't told me how Firebase connects to Flutter." Okay, so now let's get into it. We all know that the use of libraries in Flutter is essential, as it is really helpful when developing mobile apps. Therefore, we are going to delve into a set of the most useful libraries that we can find at the moment: FlutterFire, which will allow us to connect our application in Flutter with Firebase in a simple, effective and reliable way.

FlutterFire, the intermediary between our mobile app and Firebase

As we have already seen, FlutterFire includes many of the features contained in Firebase. In addition, they are official libraries, so it provides additional security to our application and backend. We are going to break down the libraries that FlutterFire offers when creating a serverless mobile app and we are going to see what we can do with each one of them.

To create an app with FlutterFire, we must meet two simple requirements:
· Start a Flutter project.
· Start a Firebase project.

In the following list, we are going to refer to many of the tools that we have mentioned before, since these libraries will be helpful when developing mobile apps.

The best libraries for FlutterFire app development

First of all, before we start talking about all of them, let's mention the most important one: Core (firebase_core). This is the library that encompasses all the functionality. However, we can use other libraries that allow us to develop a specific functionality, let's see them:

• firebase_analytics: for Google Analytics.
• firebase_auth: for Authentication.
• cloud_firestore: for Cloud Firestore.
• cloud_functions: for Cloud Functions.
• firebase_messaging: for Cloud Messaging.
• firebase_storage: for Cloud Storage.
• firebase_crashlytics: for Crashlytics.
• firebase_database: for Realtime Database.
• firebase_dynamic_links: for Dynamic Links.
• firebase_in_app_messaging (beta): for In-App Messaging (to interact with active users of our app).
• firebase_ml_vision (beta): for ML Kit.
• firebase_performance (beta): for Perfomance Monitoring.
• firebase_remote_config (beta): for Remote Config.

How to develop an app with FlutterFire?

We already know everything we need to develop an app with Flutter using FlutterFire and Firebase. In addition, we have gone through the requirements we need to achieve it. Being this said, we are now going to see how to implement FlutterFire in our mobile application. To do this, we only need to go to the pubspec.yaml file of our project and add:

After this, the next step is to run the command: flutter pub get and we will get the firebase_core library installed and ready to use. The next step will be to initialize Firebase with the initializeApp() method, and the rest is now part of the past.

Is it worth creating an app with FlutterFire?

At this point you may be considering creating an application in Flutter using FlutterFire in order to benefit from the advantages of Firebase. At Abalit Technologies, we are a team of experts in application development in Flutter and Firebase (FlutterFire) in Barcelona and Madrid, and we can help you if you have any doubt about it... obviously, to no commitment. Request a quote to create a Flutter + Firebase app (FlutterFire) completely free of charge. What are you waiting for?

Conclusion and personal opinion about FlutterFire

In my opinion, making use of FlutterFire has an inherent advantage when it comes to creating mobile applications. We will be able to make a fully functional mobile app with the same quality as if we were using a traditional server architecture, but with higher performance and lower development and maintenance costs.
Another great advantage of FlutterFireis that, in most cases, building a Backend will not be necessary, because the functionality provided by Firebase is enough to run our app, and also avoids the need to have your own servers. Of course, Firebase will also take care of the scalability and availability of its service. But above all, with FlutterFire, we will reduce the future costs of the project.
How is this reflected in your business? Exactly: more time available for other tasks, the most precious asset, and less expenses.
In short, there a lot more reasons to create an app with FlutterFire. Luckily, at Abalit, we have already found them, and we can help you develop your application in Flutter + Firebase when you are ready for it. Don't forget to request your FlutterFire app development quote to no commitment, and free of charge!