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Firebase — auth, Firestore & push notifications
EcosystemFirebase
Firebase covers the parts of an app that are the same every time — sign-in, a realtime document store, push notifications, crash reporting — so a small project doesn't need a backend team to get moving.
Why I use it
For an early-stage product, Firebase Auth alone saves weeks that would otherwise go into password resets, email verification and OAuth callbacks. Firestore's realtime listeners fit the mobile case well: the UI subscribes and stays current without polling. The limits are real and worth knowing up front — no joins, and queries have to be designed alongside the documents rather than after them. When the data turns relational I move to Postgres and stop fighting it.
What I've built with it
- Authentication with email, Google and phone sign-in across React and React Native clients
- Firestore models shaped around read patterns, with denormalisation where the alternative was a join the database doesn't have
- Cloud Messaging for push notifications on iOS and Android, including the APNs certificate setup people usually get stuck on
- Security rules as the actual authorization boundary — a client-side check is UX, not enforcement
- Crashlytics on release builds, so a production crash arrives with a usable stack trace
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