I have an existing iOS app that I'd like to start adding some React Native screens to. The app uses Firebase with persistence enabled so that it works offline. Is there a way to also use Firebase directly within React Native while maintaining offline functionality?
If the answer is "Yes", do iOS and React Native share the same local data store? This would be important, so that offline data changes on iOS screens would reflect data changes made from React Native screens and vice versa.
Thanks for sharing your insight on this!
Alternatively, you can use Firestack, which is a native library that works with both iOS and Android on react native.
Offline support is enabled along with storage, the real-time database, authentication, remote configuration (in development), etc.
(disclosure: I am one of the primary authors of Firestack)
Firebase's offline disk persistence is currently only available in its native iOS and Android SDKs. It is not yet available for JavaScript SDK.
The javascript SDK will persist new write requests when you are offline and will sync with the server once you go online. But if you were hoping to show a list with data that was previously fetched from firebase, then you are out of luck with Javascript.
One of the answers mentions Firestack, but it is no longer supported.
On a project I just ended up installing this package https://github.com/invertase/react-native-firebase. It is a bridge to the native ios & Android SDKs for firebase and if you use it you can also use persistence.
Tested and verified. All works great! :)
UPDATE:
It is now possible https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/web/offline-capabilities
OBSOLETE:
As of Firebase JavaScript SDK 3.1.0, offline persistance is still unavailable. It's recommended you use React Native's AsyncStorage.
All of the answers above are out of date!
As of JULY 2020 offline persistence is supported out of the box when you use react-native-firebase.
Read more here: https://rnfirebase.io/firestore/usage#offline-capabilities
Related
I have integrated Firebase in my iOS app.
I have installed Performance SDK as well and it's tracking default things like Network metrics, app start traces etc.
But, there's no data for screen wise rendering.
What could be possible reason?
My Firebase Performance SDK version is 4.10.1
Communicated to Firebase Support and got immediate reply from them.
Sorted this out by updating Firebase to latest version. I was using Firebase 4.x.x and Screen Rendering Performance feature is added in 5.x.x
I've developed a web app that needs to work on mobile devices offline. I've looked into progressive web apps and I'm pretty excited by the trend. Sadly, Apple still doesn't have working support, but it looks like that's changing https://cloudfour.com/thinks/apple-starts-work-on-progressive-web-apps/
Even though Apple devices don't support PWAs as Android does, it seems like certain features are already supported such as offline storage via IndexedDB(?). Does anyone know if I can currently use IndexedDB via PouchDB (for instance) to save/retrieve data? A link to a web app with this capability would be very helpful.
All I need to do for my app to function is to be able to open pdf's located on the local file system and update/retrieve data from a browser based db. Hopefully this is possible.
I don't know what a progressive web app is, yet you can definitly use PouchDB on apple devices.
The pouch docs (dating back to 2015) still say that there's no support for IndexedDB on iOS Safari as the implementation is too buggy. Back then you could use PouchDB via WebSQL on iOS.
Recent versions of iOS and Safari do support IndexedDB, see the caniuse on IndexedDB. So you should also be able to use PouchDB via IndexedDB.
I'm looking to build an iOS hybrid application that also utilizes an Apple Watch application. The watchOS app collects Altimeter data to be stored, and that's it. I was thinking of using this plugin since the watchOS portion is written in Swift. I haven't yet begun the iPhone app, it's just blank right now, but was thinking of making it a hybrid application using Cordova. I've been searching for the best way to share data between the applications, and I think SQLite may be the easiest.
This cordova plugin can be used to manipulate data in an SQLite database using JS. That could be used in the iPhone app. I guess my quesiton is - is this possible? If I create a database in swift using this library, will the Cordova plugin be able to access it? Does anyone have any better ideas for sharing data from a native watchkit app to a hybrid iPhone app?
That will not work. If you create a SQLite database in the watch application running on the watch which is a physically different device than the iPhone running your cordova app, how should the application running on the iPhone access the database?
The way to go to use a watch-kit application in combination with a cordova app is cordova-plugin-apple-watch. The plugin offers three different possibilities to communicate between the watch app and the iphone app:
Message passing
Local notifications and
User defaults
If the data should be accessible by both apps and it should be persistent (like a database) the way to go is probably user defaults. But if you just want to send data from your watch-app to your cordova-app (which will not be needed on the watch anymore) then message passing does also work (the cordova-app can then store the data wherever you want).
I am attempting to use the firebase database in my watchKit app. I have developed this feature on my iPhone application but have found it difficult to do the same on my Watch app. When I attempted to import firebase into the VC class in watch app, it is creating an error no such module 'firebase'.
Is it possible to use firebase inside a watch app?
Sadly there is no Firebase support for watchOS2 and watchOS3 due to the fact that there's no support for CFNetwork in these versions of watchOS and Firebase is highly dependent on this framework. Source (thanks for the link #FrankvanPuffelen in comments).
You have two alternatives:
Use the Firebase REST API directly from your watch app.
Handle all Firebase communication from the iPhone app and use the WatchConnectivity framework to send the relevant changes to your watch app.
Depending on your exact use case, you could choose any of the two. The main advantages/disadvantages of these two are that the WatchConnectivity framework is quite limited as in when it can be used. Both of your apps needs to be running at least in the background for the WatchConenctivity framework to work. On the other hand, if you choose to use the REST API, you don't need the watch app to communicate with the iPhone counterpart, the watch app can directly get the Firebase data using network requests. However, in this scenario, the network usage will be bigger, since you will need to essentially fetch the same information both for the iPhone and watch apps.
Update for watchOS 6:
Firebase Messaging has been released with watchOS support, however, the Realtime Database along with other Firebase SDKs are still not supported. You can track the progress of them in this GitHub issue, which also contains links to the specific feature request issues for the other SDKs.
Firebase v7.9.0 added WatchOS support for realtime database.
https://firebase.google.com/support/release-notes/ios#realtime-database
I am planing to develop an VoIP iOS app and use Twilios SDK. I am making the choice to either use LiveCode, Appery.io, PhoneGap or build a native Objective C app. I am going to build the app for iOS, Android and HTML5 so the ideal would be to develope in JavaScript for all platforms, but as I understand the support for WebRTC is laking on the iPhone so the alternative for iOS is the native twilio SDK.
My requirements is:
be possilbe to use in iPhone 5 with iOS 7 be able to use twilio iOS
SDK´s voip functionality or twilio´s js SDK (if it is possible to
wrap a browser that supports RTC in the code?) be able to integrate
billing such as in-app payment or paypal with zooz or similar
communicate with REST API´s such as Amazon S3 or a node.js server
store temporary info in a SQLLite db when app is off line make fast
and responsive views (file listings etc) is very important
create cfuuid´s
I have seen several Twilio projects that use PhoneGap but none that are using LiveCode.
I have already built an iOS VoIP app in Objective C, but I want to be able to release it on several platforms also such as for Android and build a HTML5 app, without redoing everything.
This isn't really a programming question and should perhaps not be asked here.
You can create an external for LiveCode and quickly create an interface using the LiveCode IDE. This is probably a quick and easy way to make a working app. If you're starting with LiveCode but are experienced in Objective-C, creating an external won't be a problem for you.
LiveCode doesn't contain native iOS controls, which means that you have to emulate the GUI. If you use PhoneGap, you also will need to compile a plugin for PhoneGap using Objective-C, but you can use a framework, such as JQuery, to get the right GUI.
Either way, you will have to compile the SDK and you'll need to be quite profound in Objective-C.
LiveCode will meet all your requirements. However, Apple will deny your app if you use PayPal for in-app purchases. You'll have to use Apple's in-app purchasing feature. I believe this is possible in LiveCode now. I'm not sure how easy it is.
I'm not sure about file listings either. On iOS, you won't have complete access to all files on the phone. This isn't a LiveCode limation but a limitation of the OS.