Highlights: Firebase, Parse & Azure Mobile Services

Cloud back-end services are revolutionary in quick application development. It takes care of routine code. Many times we write services that act as pass through between UI and data store. Consider two tier architecture with cloud back-end services; Your HTML page or mobile app is directly interacting with cloud back-end. More often than not you don't need to develop middle tier. The back end service acts as one.

In this blog I'm attempting write about Firebase, Parse and Azure Mobile Services.

• It's quite easy to integrate C.R.U.D operations in your application using any of these services. 
• They are "cloud" based, so **no** data center or server setup required. They are all ready to hit the ground running.
• This approach is quite useful for mobile app developers who don't have to setup servers around the world to support their user base. Lot of logic can be written client side and these services provide effective data store and related services.
• All of them have user services and authentication related features.

Which additional features each of these back-end services provide? Let's find out.

Firebase Highlights

• Late last year (2014) Google acquired Firebase, a promising back-end service. 
• Firebase data has no schema. Data is represented as JSON objects. Each node or element in the JSON object has it's own URL. So if you need to reference a child node in your code, can do so by directly referencing it's URL.
• Firebase has API for Android, iOS, Web (JavaScript) and REST API. These are many ways in which your code can interact with Firebase.
• Firebase clients are always synchronized. It's a huge. You don't have to write code push message or data changes to the client (or poll from the client). As and when data is modified in the back-end, changes are pushed to all of it's clients.
• It fits naturally with AngularJS. If you are an ng developer you are in luck :)

Here is one of my earlier blogs on Firebase

Firebase

Parse Highlights

• Parse was acquired by Facebook in 2013. They provide back-end services for mobile and web applications.
• Cloud core provides data storage. It too is schema less. But Parse makes it explicit on how to deal with relational data. Refer to this link.
• Parse Cloud Functions allow adding additional logic on Parse server side. You could add additional validations, send push notifications etc (on server side).
• Parse push is a very useful feature. It allows sending push notifications to multiple mobile platforms Android and iOS. You can preview notification, schedule it personalized for the user. For example a notification scheduled for 11 AM in the morning in U.S. wouldn't wake up customer in India middle of the night. Rather personalizes to send it at 11 AM India time.
• JavaScript perspective Parse fits naturally with backbone style of coding. It supports huge list of technologies and platforms. Refer to the image for list.
• Finally Parse features Core and Push could be used independently. You don't need to be using Core to use Push and vice versa.

A link to my earlier blog on Parse

Azure Mobile Services Highlights

It's little tricky to include Azure Mobile Services in this list. It's one of many features and services Microsoft Azure provides. I believe it fits in the category of Parse and Firebase as it provides lot of out of box features for faster development and integration of back-end services.

• Schema: Azure Mobile Services by default uses MS SQL Server for data storage. As it's possibly using code first, you don't have to define columns (schema). They are effectively created on the fly. 
• Unlike other back-end services, with Azure Mobile Services you can chose data storage from SQL Server, Mongo DB and Azure Storage
• You have a choice for backend technology as well between .net and JavaScript (NodeJS)
• Similar to Parse Cloud Functions Azure Mobile Services allow adding additional code on server side. In Azure Management Portal, select your Azure Mobile Services, go to data tab, select the table and select Script tab. Use drop down to modify script for add or update or retrieve or delete operations.
• Azure Mobile Services provide Push Notifications across mobile platforms Windows, Android and iOS. It integrates with MPNS (Windows),  APN (iOS) and GCM (Android) services for push notifications.
• Azure Mobile Services have APIs for following platforms,

Here are my earlier blogs on Azure Mobile Services, Mongo DB with Azure Mobile Service, Push Notifications for Phone App using Azure Mobile Services and Windows Azure Mobile Services for Connected Apps

In conclusion one of the biggest advantages of cloud back-end services is time to develop. They reduce lot of routine code and provides features out of box. 

Firebase as your app's backend

Firebase is a cloud based back-end as a service provider. It can be used as a very effective No SQL data-store. Your application can store JSON objects. Integration is made easy with variety of libraries provided by Firebase. For this blog I'm focusing on Web/JavaScript library.

https://www.firebase.com/docs/

As a developer it's quick to get started. No overhead of installation and setup. It's a cloud service, so don't have worry about setting-up servers. Firebase tools on your machine are provided as an NPM package. Install with following command, globally on your machine.

npm install firebase-tools -g

This makes it a good choice for independent mobile/web app developers. Signup and login to Firebase.
Create an app. Remeber your app has a URL. JSON Key/Value pairs are shown at that URL. You might chose to manually add/remove/modify data as well.

Synchronized:

As and when data is updated in the backend, JavaScript events are raised and the callbacks provided are invoked with updated data. Hence your app is in near synchronous state all the time. With this approach we write less code, retrieving data is made simpler. Down below I've mentioned couple of data retrieval options. Checkout more here.

Consider Two Tier Architecture

With JavaScript and browsers being more and more powerful, you don't have to look at mandatory middle tier. Firebase can act as your middle tier and data store. Security, validation and authentication features of Firebase do allow this kind of architecture. 

Get Started

by referencing Firebase library in your Web Page. You could use CDN location. Or by downloading Firebase bower or npm package. I chose bower (package manager).

bower install firebase

And reference of firebase.js in bower_components. There after

//create an object of Firebase
var ref = new Firebase('URL of your firebase app');

Save Data to Firebase:

// to set a primitive data value
ref.set('sample value')
ref.set(100);

// you may set a JSON object instead
ref.set({
field1: 1,
field2: {
  child1: 'value'
}});

//If you are storing a new object every time, use push (array) instead of set.
ref.push({
field1: 1,
field2: {
  child1: 'value'
}});


Retrieve data from Firebase:

As mentioned earlier, Firebase keeps data synchronized. Data is pushed to the browser as changes happen. JavaScript code need to have callback functions defined to update view as data is retrieved automatically.


//Look for changes to the data
ref.on('value', function(snapshot){
    console.log(snapshot.val());
});

// data added as a child node.
ref.on('child_added', function(snapshot){
    console.log(snapshot.val());
})

All data elements in Firebase are represented by URL. You can traverse through the nodes in the URL itself. For example, to reach child1 in above example, you could provide URL "http://yourapp.firebase.io/field2/child1" to the Firebase function.

or you could use ref.child('field1/child1')



(More data retrieval options)

Running your application:

You may use any Web-Server to serve HTML files on your machine. Serve is a good choice.

npm install serve -g

Run serve from at the root folder of your application.
Firebase also provides hosting service. Run

firebase init
(Link application to Firebase app in this step.)

firebase deploy
(Deploys to Firebase cloud service)

You can serve HTML files on the cloud now. URL is on App Card It will be your appname.firebasepp.com

This is an introductory blog. Do checkout Security, Authentication, OAuth and Offline features of Firebase.




Also, I've basic Firebase examples on my Github. Use this link to explore.