Everything You Need to Know About Building MVP With React and Firebase

While a concept is in the ideation phase, it is wise to simplify and build a minimal core to see if it works per your needs. Moreover, a prototype will assist in knowing if there is any market for your product before you lose your resources. The creation of this minimal core is known as ‘Minimal Viable Product’ or MVP. Let us learn how to create an MVP using React and Firebase.

Why Should You Use Firebase?

Firebase is a well-equipped platform that serves as backend development software. Firebase provides various important options all under one software and helps to embrace

• Database
• Internet hosting
• Authentication
• Storage 
• Analytics
• Cloud features

 When using Firebase, you will have to pay attention to scale the reach of your product, as some limitations might come your way. When you think about your first MVP, Firebase can be the correct solution.

Setup for the Firebase

Launch the Firebase and sign up with your Google account and follow the following steps:

• Make a Firebase project and name it ‘SitePointBooks.’
• You are not required to enable Google Analytics when working on this project. Choose the create project Tab.
• Build a web app and name it ‘Sitepoint-books-app’ in the console of Firebase.
• The next step involves naming the app. This name can be the same as your project and then choose the register app option.
• Now go to Add firebase SDK option, choose use npm and copy the required output. You can choose from the wide range of Firebase SDKs.
• Next, you must note your firebase configuration and choose the “continue to console” option.

If you wish to complete the setup more efficiently, you can copy the required script to the firebase.js file.  

Cloud Firestore

We will be using cloud Firestore for a database that allows the users to develop and build the data using collections.

In the console, go to the Firestore database tab and choose to create a database option. A dialogue box will appear.

• Select “start in test mode” on the very first page
• On the second page, you must set the region for the database and choose the enable option.

After you have initialized the data, the next step involves increasing the population of the database. You will have to launch a second browser and copy the required ID from the record, whichever reference field is required. You can begin the process of populating the database.

Launch the Dev Server

After the database has been populated, you can now move ahead with executing the “npm run dev” command and search “localhost:3000” for the interaction with your project. Note that this is just a prototype, and it is just to provide you with a fair idea of how your application will work and some features that might not work.

Routing 

Structuring a CRUD layout for a project consisting of more than one entity can make things go complicated very soon. Hence it is advised that for routing, you should use React Router to implement a routing structure using a standardized syntax. React JS development company offers this service if you are looking for such a service as an organization.

Database Service 

For the web platform or the application of Node.js, the package required to be installed in your project is an “official firebase package.” It is essential as all the tools necessary to connect all the backend operations are stored by this package making the work very efficient. Now, you will have to communicate with your Cloud Firestore database. Next, you will have to transfer the object called “DB” to any of the react containers, and after that, you can start the database querying.

List of Documents

Now that the database service is all set, we will have to call it from one of the containers, which can be, for example, “ScreenAuthorList.” Once all of the data is correctly undertaken, it will be supplied down with the help of props to a component of the presentation, the “authorlist.”

Now we will be required to use the react query to manage all the server data from the front-end state. It becomes much easier using this package than following any other method. 

Other Services of Firebase

Well, many Firebase services cannot be covered in a single article, given the wide range of services offered by Firebase. All the services are in some or other way very essential for the backend development for building your MVP app. Few of the services have already been mentioned in the article above; hence in this section, we will only cover the overview of these services. 

As already mentioned, the security rules we have configured give the public read and write access to our backend. So, to secure your firebase account and protect it from foreign intruders, you must thoroughly go through the security rules. To follow a more secure way to protect your firebase account, you will also be required to execute the firebase authentication, which will be helpful for your app. 

Conclusion 

Now you know how to register on Firebase, link the collections to your UI, the process of populating the database, and many other essential things. This React integration with Firebase provides a well-equipped platform for developers to create and build MVPs more efficiently.

There are still many helpful tools and services offered by Firebase, which become valuable when we are in the process of developing an MVP. There are various firebase extensions also, which are helpful for the operation of developing MVP. Check them out here and make your next project a raging success.