orb-firebase v0.0.31

Firebase with GraphQL

Why GraphQL with Firebase?

Firebase is an awesome platform for developers. It’s a one-stop-shop for authentication, hosting, database, and serverless cloud functions. It is realtime first and it has a very generous free tier and awesome tooling. But it has one achilles heel: querying the database. GraphQL provides a very dynamic and expressive query layer and can vastly simplify fetching operations for Firebase clients.

Why Apollo Server 2?

apollo-server-express is very lightweight, easy to wire up, and pairs well with Firebase Cloud Functions. That makes it cheap, cheap, and cheap.

Install Firebase CLI

npm install -g firebase
npm install -g firebase-tools

Create a Firebase project

First ensure you have OAuth 2.0 authentication

firebase login

Then create a project folder and initialize the project with Functions. This project uses JavaScript.

firebase init

◯ Functions: Configure and deploy Cloud Functions

Install dependencies

cd functions
npm install
npm install apollo-server-express express graphql