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Cloud Firestore, by Firebase — Store, sync and query app data at global scale
Store and sync data between users and devices - at global scale - using a cloud-hosted, noSQL database. Cloud Firestore gives you live synchronization and offline support along with efficient data queries. Its integration with other Firebase products enables you to build truly serverless apps.
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@playgraph Hi David, we say Firestore is "near realtime" to avoid confusion with the more rigorous definition of realtime used in computing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re...). By that definition, both databases are really only "near realtime".
We don't have benchmarks on latency, but in general the Realtime Database should be a little faster (by low hundreds of milliseconds), due to the mutli region replication of data on Cloud Firestore. For most apps this is not really noticeable. You would see a difference if you tried to sync a cursor position, for example, on a shared whiteboard. For these types of usecases, we recommend sticking with the Realtime Database.
We used Cloud Firestore to create a skunkworks project called HomeAway Local, and the experience was fantastic -- kudos to James T, Alex D and Andrew L and the rest of the Firebase crew!
Pros:Whatever the size of your project (small hackathon idea or massive company), Firebase's Cloud Firestore is great for fast iterations, scale
Cons:Our alpha experience was actually great, we had fantastic customer service support from the Firebase team, no complaints
Hey Hunters,
I’m Alex, PM of Cloud Firestore. Today the Firebase team and I are excited to launch Cloud Firestore, a fully-managed NoSQL document database.
We built Cloud Firestore to make app development easier by handling many of the hard problems of storing app data for you, like scaling servers, delivering data with low latency, and handling offline usage.
Here are some of the key features of Cloud Firestore:
- Documents and collections with powerful querying
- iOS, Android, and Web SDKs with offline data access
- Real-time data synchronization
- Automatic, multi-region data replication with strong consistency
- Node, Python, Go, Java server SDKs
Before Firebase, I spent 5 years building and a growing a startup in the collaboration space, using many Firebase products. We loved how the Realtime Database allowed us to quickly iterate - and we often wished it came with simpler scaling, advanced querying capabilities and more intuitive data structuring. This is what Cloud Firestore is all about.
If you're using the Firebase Realtime Database today or if you're building apps, we think you'll love it, and we can’t wait to see what you build with it!
Learn more about the announcement here: https://goo.gl/m3pmWG
@alexdufetel Thanks! Good work. Kudos to the whole team.
So I can ditch realtime database for Firestore as it provides better way to structure data and better way to query them?
@alexdufetel Congrats! Super exciting. Having spent years using and playing with Firebase real-time database, this really feels like the next gen Firebase addressing the limitations that prevented me from using Firebase for virtually anything. Much more advanced querying and super scalability combined with hopefully more region / replication options is great. Any compatibility layer to migrate quickly?
@_jdkanani Thanks! If you're hitting querying constraints with the Realtime Database, then you should certainly give Cloud Firestore a spin. One way to get your feet wet is simply to use Cloud Firestore for some new functionality you're building - you don't necessarily need to migrate - though you're welcome to do so if it really makes sense for you.
In general, we'll be recommending Cloud Firestore for most new apps. That being said, Cloud Firestore is not a drop in replacement for the Realtime Database. Both products will now live alongside in Firebase and we're continuing the development of both products. In some edge cases, the Realtime Database will still be the best option. You can read a more in-depth comparison between the two databases here : https://firebase.googleblog.com/...
Keep me posted when you've tried Cloud Firestore out, would love to hear your feedback.
@cwehrung Thanks! There won't be any off the shelf migration tool. Given the difference in data models, there's really no one size fits all solution that we could build. I'd say your best shot to migrate quickly is to use functions to replicate data - but I think the best option is to start using both together and if you really want to migrate do it progressively.
@alexdufetel Hey, built small storage system using Firestore and IPFS: https://matic.network/bag
Works great. Will use it in more complex app and keep you updated. Thanks a lot!
@spenser not at all, they're actually quite different! We have a blog post that helps explain the differences: https://firebase.googleblog.com/...
Been looking for this for a while - querying, scaling, and new pricing seems very attractive thanks team. The article mentions some apps are using it in production - when do do you think it'd be rather stable, and is offline support capability with react native coming out soon with firestore?
@stevel_sk To learn more about React Native and Firestore, check out the React Native Firebase repo: https://github.com/invertase/rea.... They have started working on a Firestore integration.
We do have people using this in production today. It's hard to answer your question because "rather stable" is very subjective. Stability requirements are different from one project to another. Here are some docs on the database specs and its limitations during beta : https://firebase.google.ceom/doc.... In general, you should be fine using Cloud Firestore in production, just make sure you can work with the current limits.
G'day Hunters! I'm Dan, the other PM for Cloud Firestore. I'm really looking forward to seeing the awesome creations this helps you build!
Leverage Firestore with Cloud Functions for extra flexibility and power.
Pros:Cloud Firestore is a powerful database technology that lends itself to rapid, iterative, and scalable development across all client stacks.
Cons:Cloud Firestore requires a general understanding of your application's data access patterns for optimal configuration.
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