Beginning FlutterFire

In Firebase, a Project is the top-level entity, the container of every Firebase feature, and this includes authentication, the Cloud Firestore Database and all the other services that you’ll be using during this course. This means that the connection between your app and Firebase happens through the project itself. You can create a new project with a command line tool that you’ll see shortly, or through the Firebase Console, that you can easily reach with your browser at the address you see on the screen. (firebase.google.com)

To access the Firebase Console, you need a Google account. Chances are you already have one, but if you don’t you can just follow the link and create one for free.

Once you have a Google account, press the “get started” button. If you are not already authenticated this will ask for your Google Credentials. After you insert them, you’ll get to your Firebase Console. You can consider this the hub for all your Firebase activities. It contains a rather friendly user interface to manage most of your Firebase activities, with no or very little code. So, as a project is the container for everything you create in Firebase, he first step is creating a new project.

Just click the “Add Project” button (or “New Project”, depending on where you are in the Console interface), and here you must choose a project name. Let’s call it “track-app”, as we will use this project to deal with an app that tracks our sport activities. Note that under the name you choose, you see a unique identifier that contains the name you have chosen and some other characters and digits. This is the real, full identifier for your project within Firebase. Now, press Continue.

In the next screen just leave the current options. Click continue again, and after a few moments your project will be created.

What you see now is the Firebase Project Overview page, which contains the name of the project (Track-app, in this case) and the billing plan. “Spark” is the name of the free plan.

Creating a Firebase project is free, and you also get a certain amount of free usage, which is currently more than enough to develop your apps. But if like I hope your app gets successful and many users get it, you’ll have to pay, based on the traffic you generate through your apps. If you want more information about pricing, follow the link you see on the screen.

Of course, you won’t need to upgrade your account to follow along with this course.

OK, let’s create a new Flutter app and configure it to connect to this project next!