Firebase
Step-by-step guide to send your event data from RudderStack to Firebase
Firebase is a popular mobile platform powered by Google. It helps you to quickly develop high-quality, enterprise-grade applications and grow your business.
RudderStack supports Firebase as a mobile device mode destination to which you can seamlessly send your customer data for analytics.
Firebase device mode support is not available for the Cordova and Flutter SDKs.
Getting started
Before configuring Firebase as a destination in RudderStack, verify if the source platform is supported by Firebase by referring to the table below:
Connection Mode | Web | Mobile | Server |
Device mode | - | Supported | - |
Cloud mode | - | - | - |
Firebase is a device mode-only integration. To know more about the difference between cloud mode and device mode in RudderStack, refer to the RudderStack Connection Modes guide.
Once you have confirmed that the source platform supports sending events to Firebase, follow these steps:
From your RudderStack dashboard, add a source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Firebase.
Assign a name to the destination and click on Next.
Connection settings
Connect this destination to your Android/iOS/Unity/React Native source. You should then see the following screen:
Client-side Events Filtering: Refer to the Client-side Events Filtering guide for more information on this setting.
As this is a device mode-only integration, click on Next to complete the destination setup.
Adding device mode integration
Depending on your platform of integration, follow the steps below to add Firebase to your project:
Android iOS Unity React NativeUse the latest version of the Firebase Android device mode to get the latest updates, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.Follow these steps to add Firebase to your Android project:
Register your mobile app in the Firebase console.
Once you have successfully created the app in the Firebase console, you will be prompted to download the
google-services.json
file.Copy this file in the
app
folder of your project. It contains all the necessary information about the project and the integration.Add the
classpath
underdependencies
to your project levelbuild.gradle
, as shown:Now, you can add the
plugins
anddependencies
to yourapp/build.gradle
file, as shown:Then, add the
mavenCentral
repository, as shown:Add the RudderStack-Firebase SDK extension along with the
core
SDK underdependencies
, as shown:Next, add the necessary
permissions
underAndroidManifest.xml
, as shown:Finally, change the SDK initialization in your
Application
class, as shown:
If you're using the Firebase iOS device mode v1.0.2, update to the latest version to get the latest updates, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.Follow these steps to add Firebase to your iOS project:
Register your app in the Firebase console. It will then prompt you to download the
GoogleServices-Info.plist
file.Add the file to the root of your XCode project.
Go to your
Podfile
and add theRudder-Firebase
extension along with the core SDK using the following code:Rudder-Firebase
version2.0.5
is tested and fully compatible withFirebase/Analytics
version8.15.0
.After adding the dependency followed by the
pod install
command, you can add the imports to yourAppDelegate.m
file, as shown:Finally, change the SDK initialization, as shown in the following snippet:
Follow these steps to add Firebase to your Unity project:
Register your project in the Firebase Console. Currently, RudderStack supports only Android and iOS platforms for Unity.
After adding the project, Firebase will prompt you to download the
google-services.json
for Android andGoogleServices-Info.plist
for iOS.Add those two files to your project's
Assets
folder.Integrate the RudderStack core SDK with your project. For more information, refer to the RudderStack Unity SDK documentation.
Download and import the Firebase Unity SDK and follow the instructions to add the Firebase SDK (specifically,
FirebaseAnalytics.unitypackage
) to your project.Download the RudderStack Firebase Extension from the GitHub page and import it in your project.
Attach the
RudderPreferbs.prefab
file fromRudder
to your mainGameObject
Finally, change the SDK initialization using the following code snippet:
Use the latest version of the Firebase React Native device mode to get the latest updates and performance enhancements.
Follow these steps to add Firebase to your React Native project:
Register your Android and iOS applications in the Firebase console.
Once you have successfully created the applications in the Firebase console, you will be prompted to download the
google-services.json
andGoogleServices-Info.plist
files.Add the RudderStack React Native SDK to your app by referring to the RudderStack ReactNative SDK documentation.
Add the RudderStack-Firebase React Native module to your app using the following command:
Next, import the module you added above and add it to your SDK initialization code as shown:
Navigate to your app's
android
folder and follow the steps below:Copy the
google-services.json
file in theapp
folder of your Android project. This file contains all the necessary information about the project and the integration.Add the
classpath
underdependencies
to your project levelbuild.gradle
file, as shown:Once you have completed the steps above, you can add the plugins and dependencies to your
app/build.gradle
file, as shown:Then, add the necessary permissions under
AndroidManifest.xml
, as shown:
Finally, navigate to your app's
iOS
folder and follow these steps:Install all the required pods using the
pod install
command.Add the
GoogleServices-Info.plist
file to the root of your XCode project.
Identify
The identify
call sets the userId
through the setUserId
method from FirebaseAnalytics
. RudderStack sets the other user properties from RudderTraits
to Firebase using the setUserProperty
method.
RudderStack ignores age
, gender
, and interest
, as these properties are reserved by Google.
Track
RudderStack's track
events are mapped to the standard Firebase events wherever possible.
Event mapping
RudderStack maps the following events to the standard Firebase events:
RudderStack Event | Firebase Event |
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The following Firebase events are not mapped to any RudderStack event:
number_of_nights
number_of_rooms
number_of_passengers
origin
destination
start_date
end_date
travel_class
item_list_name
creative_slot
location_id
transaction_id
screen_class
RudderStack passes all the event-related properties to Firebase. The nested values in the properties are converted to JSON using GSON.
Property mapping
RudderStack maps the following event properties to the standard Firebase properties:
RudderStack property | Firebase property |
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Along with mapping the above list of the standard property names, RudderStack exhibits the following behavior:
Converts the event names to the lower case.
Trims the whitespaces at the start and the end.
Replaces a space with an underscore.
Firebase enforces a strict event name length limit of 40 characters. RudderStack takes a substring of 40 characters (from the beginning) if the event names exceed this permitted value.
A sample track
call sent from the iOS SDK is shown below:
Screen
The screen
method lets you record whenever a user sees their mobile screen along with any optional properties about the viewed screen.
A sample screen
call is as shown:
Reset
The reset
method resets the user identification.
A sample reset
call is shown below:
iOS Android
Debugging
You can check the events and their properties in the Firebase DebugView. To enable it for Android, run the following command from your terminal:
For iOS, specify the following in your command line argument in XCode:
FAQ
How do I disable automatic screen tracking while using the RudderStack SDKs?
For Android, nest the following setting within the
<application>
tag of yourAndroidManifest.xml
file:
For iOS, set
FirebaseAutomaticScreenReportingEnabled
toNO
(Boolean) in yourInfo.plist
.
For more information, refer to the Firebase documentation.
Contact us
For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.
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