Installation & Setup for REST API

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, Apple platforms, 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 an account at no cost 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 real time. In your app dashboard, you can also set Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules, manage your app's authentication, deploys, and view analytics.

Create a Database

1. Navigate to the Realtime Database section of the Firebase console. You'll be prompted to select an existing Firebase project. Follow the database creation workflow.

2. Select a starting mode for your Firebase Security Rules:

   Test mode

   Good for getting started with the mobile and web client libraries, but allows anyone to read and overwrite your data. After testing, make sure to review the Understand Firebase Realtime Database Rules section.

   To get started with the web, Apple, or Android SDK, select testmode.

   Locked mode

   Denies all reads and writes from mobile and web clients. Your authenticated application servers can still access your database.

3. Choose a location for the database.

   Depending on the location of the database, the URL for the new database will be in one of the following forms:

   • DATABASE_NAME.firebaseio.com (for databases in us-central1)

   • DATABASE_NAME.REGION.firebasedatabase.app (for databases in all other locations)

4. Click Done.

When you enable Realtime Database, it also enables the API in the Cloud API Manager.

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:

Next Steps

• Learn how to structure data for Realtime Database.
• Save data.
• Retrieve data.
• View your database in the Firebase console.