firedart #

An incomplete, dart-native implementation of the Firebase SDK based on Firebase's REST and RPC interfaces.

This library attempts to minimize dependencies with the intention of making it able to run in any environment capable of executing dart code. Currently it has been successfully tested ùsing the dart runtime (x86-64 and arm32) as well as on Flutter Android, iOS and Desktop.

Currently the only supported services are Firebase Auth and Firestore.

Dependencies #

Add firedart to your pubspec.yaml file:

dependencies:
  firedart: ^0.6.0

Firebase Auth #

The FirebaseAuth class implements the necessary functionality for managing accounts. It currently only supports Email/Password sign-in, so make sure it's enabled under Authentication -> Sign-in Method.

You'll also need to go to your Firebase Console, open Project Settings and under the General tab copy the Web API Key.

Note: if you're targeting Flutter Mobile you might want to import PreferencesStore into your project.

Usage #

import 'package:firedart/firedart.dart';

FirebaseAuth has a singleton version which should be enough for most use cases. You'll need to initialise it with your API key and a token store (see note above):

FirebaseAuth.initialize(apiKey, await PreferencesStore());
await FirebaseAuth.instance.signIn(email, password);
var user = await FirebaseAuth.instance.getUser();

Alternatively you can instantiate your own FirebaseAuth object:

var firebaseAuth = FirebaseAuth.(apiKey, await PreferencesStore());
await firebaseAuth.signIn(email, password);
var user = await firebaseAuth.getUser();

Further usage examples can be found in the integration tests.

Limitations #

• Currently the only supported authentication provider is Email/Password.

Firestore #

The Firestore class is a basic implementation of the service's RPC interface. The API is similar (but not identical) to that of the official SDK.

Usage #

import 'package:firedart/firedart.dart';

As with FirebaseAuth, Firestore offers a singleton version that needs to be initialised with your Project ID, which you can find under Project Settings -> General:

Firestore.initialize(projectId);
var map = await Firestore.instance.collection("users").get();
var users = UserCollection.fromMap(map);

You can also instantiate your own Firestore object. Please note that if your database requires authenticated access, you'll need to pass along an instance of FirebaseAuth.

var firebaseAuth = FirebaseAuth.(apiKey, await PreferencesStore());
var firestore = Firestore(projectId, auth: firebaseAuth);

await firebaseAuth.signIn(email, password);
var map = await firestore.collection("users").get();
var users = UserCollection.fromMap(map);

Further usage examples can be found in the integration tests.

Limitations #

• Collection queries (limit, sort, etc.) are currently not supported.
• The data is not cached locally.
• Failed writes (e.g. due to network errors) are not retried.
• Closed streams are not automatically recovered.

Regenerating the RPC stubs #

The Firestore RPC stubs are based on Google's official protobuf definition files from googleapis.

To regenerate them, you will need to check out both googleapis and protobuf.

Set the PROTOBUF and GOOGLEAPIS environment variables to point to your clones of the above repositories respectively, and then run:

$ tool/regenerate.sh

Debugging #

For debugging Firebase Auth you can use VerboseClient, an HTTP client that logs all communication to the console. The logs can expose sensitive data including passwords and keys, so it's recommended to only enable it for development builds. In Flutter this can be achieved using the kReleaseMode constant from the foundation package:

var client = !kReleaseMode ? VerboseClient() : http.Client();
var firebaseAuth = FirebaseAuth(apiKey, await PreferencesStore(), httpClient: client);
var firestore = Firestore(httpClient: client);

Securing Tokens #

If you're running your code in an environment that requires securing access tokens, you can extend TokenStore to persist data in a secure maner, e.g. by encrypting the data or storing it in an external vault. Example implementations can be found in token_store.dart.