App development is becoming more difficult. Developers must create for a variety of platforms as well as an increasing number of form factors. They must fulfil increasing security and scalability needs while also meeting rising client expectations. Google is releasing a series of new changes to Firebase, its backend app development software, to assist developers deal with it all.
Google unveiled a number of enhancements to Firebase, its famous back-end-as-a-service platform, at its I/O developer conference. Deeper interfaces with the rest of Google’s developer tools and platforms, as well as the general developer ecosystem, are the main focus here, along with a number of changes that will help developers better protect their applications, including new extension events, native Swift support, App Check security enhancements, enhanced performance monitoring, and more.
Firebase Extensions, which are pre-packaged chunks of code containing common features produced by Google and other third-party organisations, allow developers to quickly build apps. Google announced “Extension events” today, which allow developers to enhance the functionality of Extensions by triggering other pieces of code.
Firebase Product Lead Francis Ma told ZDNet, focusing in helping developers tackle problems that don’t often immediately market their products, like establishing backend services and scaling it, things like privacy, or having to interact with third-party APIs. Developers will be able to focus on what they have to do to keep up with customer expectations and reach people where they are. primarily aimed at improving Firebase’s compatibility with some of Google’s most popular development tools as well as a broader open ecosystem of tools. More than 3 million Firebase developers would be affected by the changes.
Apple’s Swift language capabilities and software development kits are being fully supported by Firebase. When using network queries with Firestore, Realtime Database, and Remote Config on macOS, this will make it easier to use Firebase’s features with Swift.
Firebase App Check protects against financial fraud, phishing, app impersonation, and data theft since protecting backend services is critical. App Check has moved from beta to general availability, including an interaction with the Play Security application interface, which safeguards apps from unwanted access, according to Google.
On the security front, Firebase is now linked with the new Play Integrity API, which allows developers to verify that an Android app’s back end hasn’t been tampered with (something that often happens with games).
Crashlytics support will be improved for Flutter developers as well. They’ll be able to set up Crashlytics for their apps in a few clicks and obtain better crash reports, as well as the option to log fatal errors in a Flutter app and receive Crashlytics crash notifications.
Crash reporting is also crucial, thanks to Firebase Crashlytics, which now interfaces with Google Play and Android Studio. It is feasible to distinguish between internal testing and production defects and swiftly triage errors using the Google Play connection. Crashlytics now integrates with Android Studio, allowing developers to swiftly evaluate and recreate reported issues by highlighting the problematic lines of code, allowing them to be promptly repaired.
Firebase App Check protects against financial fraud, phishing, app impersonation, and data theft since protecting backend infrastructure is critical. App Check has moved from beta to general availability, including an interaction with the Play Integrity application programming interface, which safeguards apps from unwanted access, according to Google.
Web developers will have a better experience.
Web apps are frequently built and deployed using current frameworks such as Angular, Vue, Next.js, and Nuxt. However, this can make managing the deployment of programmes more difficult. Some frameworks are designed for front-end deployments, while others are designed for back-end deployments, and developers must coordinate everything.
With firebase deploy, developers can now publish modern web projects with a single command. Google automatically detects and deploys all dependencies across Firebase hosting and backend services.
Enhanced Safety
Google is making App Check available to the entire public in order to increase app developer security. App Check checks that incoming traffic is coming from a developer’s app on a legitimate device, and it blocks traffic with invalid credentials. This helps defend the app against attacks such as billing fraud, phishing, app impersonation, data theft, and poisoning. App Check is also now compatible with the Play Integrity API.
Better handling of third-party APIs
Developers frequently employ a large number of third-party APIs in their apps, ranging from 20 to as many as 40. They could, for example, be utilising Stripe to handle payments or Twilio to manage email conversations.
Google announced Firebase Extensions two years ago, which provides developers with pre-packaged solutions and integrations. Google is now introducing the concept of Extensions Events, which allows developers to deploy pre-packaged APIs while also changing them.
Google also announced the availability of third-party marketing, search, and payment processing extensions. Snap, for example, has two new extensions that allow users to log in with Snap and promote their items in their stories.
