The Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted database. Data is stored as JSON and synchronized in realtime to every connected client. When you build cross-platform apps with our Android, iOS, and JavaScript SDKs, all of your clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.
We can use any Firebase Realtime Database URL as a REST endpoint. All we need
to do is append .json to the end of the URL and send a request from
our favorite HTTPS client.
Create an account
First sign up for a free account in the Firebase console. A new Firebase app will be created for
you with a unique URL ending in firebaseio.com. You'll use this URL to authenticate
your users and to store and sync data to the app's database.
Within the Firebase console you can create, manage and delete Firebase apps. Clicking on a specific Firebase app lets you view and modify your app's database in realtime. In your app dashboard, you can also set Firebase Realtime Database Rules, manage your app's authentication, deploys, and view analytics.
Choose a Helper Library
You can read and write data through the REST API directly from the command line. In this guide we'll use cURL for all of our examples. We also have several third-party helper libraries for interacting with the REST API from your favorite language. You can use one of the following helper libraries or create your own:
| Language | Libraries |
|---|---|
| Clojure | taika by Cloudfuji |
| Dart | IO Client in the official firebase-dart library |
| Go |
Firego by Steven Berlanga and Tim Gossett Go Firebase by Cosmin Nicolaescu and Justin Tulloss |
| Java | firebase4j by Brandon Gresham |
| Perl | Firebase-Perl by Kiran Kumar and JT Smith |
| PHP |
firebase-php by kreait firebase-php by Tamas Kalman |
| Python | Pyrebase by James Childs-Maidment python-firebase by Özgür Vatansever python-firebase by Michael Huynh |
| Ruby |
firebase-ruby by Oscar Del Ben BigBertha by Fernand Galiana rest-firebase by Codementor |
Next Steps
- Learn how to structure data for Realtime Database.
- Save data.
- Retrieve data.
- View your database in the Firebase console.