Graph Data with Firebase

In my previous article titled “Build a Web App with Backbone.js and Socket.io” I’ve explained how to use Backbone.js and Socket.IO to implement an asynchronous messaging paradigm to avoid coupling.

The idea behind the tutorial was to separate groups of code that are highly dependent on one another and the example I've shown was a graph visualization tool where data is beautifully synced cross users.

In this post, I'll re-use my Backbone example to migrate the existing data storage to Firebase. Before deepening the topic, let's take a quick look at some Firebase concepts, and then get started coding.

Firebase

Firebase is a platform for building mobile and web applications. It provides three services:

• User Authentication, which is a tool to authenticate users with only client-side code
• Realtime Database, a realtime JSON database for storing and sync data
• Static Hosting, a production-grade static asset hosting

These services take responsibility to handle complex things and do the hard work of backend for us. Besides, Firebase applications can be accessed directly from the client side.

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by Igor Ribeiro Lima via SitePoint