Cloud
What is the cloud?
The cloud is made up of managed computing resource, services and storage. When creating a cloud application, the goal is to save time by not needing to configure servers and possibly save money by not needing to purchase computer hardware.
There are three large cloud providers:
- Amazon AWS
- Google Cloud Services
- Microsoft Azure
Cloud services are generally billed using a “pay-as-you-go” model, meaning you pay for the resources used.
Firebase
Firebase is a mobile and web application development platform integrated with Google Cloud Services.
As a web developer, Firebase offers several useful services listed below.
Firebase provides a very generous free, no credit card required, plan allowing for development and deployment a production grade application.
Hosting
- easy global deployment of web assets
- free SSL security certificates
Cloud Functions
- allows serving dynamic content
- allows building backend services
- eliminates the need to configure servers
⚠️ 🚨 With the free (no credit card) plan functions can not call services outside of google or firebase. However, this is why you were given credits in the beginning of the course.
Cloud Firestore
- NoSQL database
- supports storing, querying, synchronizing, working offline
- user based security
- integrates with Cloud Functions for triggering backend tasks and storing application state
Storage
- allows storing and serving user generated content like photos and videos
- supports user based security
- integrates with Cloud Functions for trigger backend tasks and managing user assets
Authentication
- easy sign that works on all platforms
- integrates with google, facebook, twitter, github
- includes UI
- Google class security
- Integrates with Cloud Firestore and Cloud storage for user based security rules