October 2021 Summaries

Firebase Cloud Messaging can export notification delivery data to BigQuery, giving developers a centralized way to investigate delivery failures caused by network conditions, device performance, invalid requests, and platform-specific behavior. After linking a Firebase project to BigQuery, which may initially take up to 48 hours to populate, developers must explicitly enable client-side logging for each platform: iOS requires separate handling for alert notifications through a Notification Service Extension and background notifications through an app delegate method, while web support is available in alpha for Firebase JS SDK 9.0.0 or later and Android support is available from SDK 20.1.0 onward. Logging is disabled by default and can be turned off by unlinking BigQuery or disabling the relevant client API. Exported data, including message IDs, types, platforms, timestamps, and custom analytics labels, can be queried or used in dashboards to assess campaign delivery, identify issues, and segment results, with additional Android aggregate analysis available through the FCM Aggregation API.

Firebase Performance Monitoring helps developers evaluate app network performance from users’ perspectives by tracking response times, success rates, and payload sizes in near real time, an important capability as faster mobile experiences can improve conversion rates. The service automatically aggregates similar network requests into privacy-preserving URL patterns, removing personally identifiable information while highlighting trends such as slowdowns in key requests. Developers can create custom URL patterns when automatic grouping is too broad or too fragmented, allowing them to isolate critical endpoints, such as a configuration API, or consolidate related requests, such as video traffic across multiple subdomains. Custom patterns take precedence over automatic ones based on specificity and can be pinned to dashboard metric cards for continued monitoring, helping teams identify bottlenecks and guide app or backend improvements.

Firebase App Check is designed to reduce abuse of Firebase services and custom backend APIs by verifying that requests originate from authorized applications, including when no user credential is present. Firebase SDKs can automatically obtain, refresh, send, and, for supported Firebase services, validate App Check tokens, while developers operating their own backends must transmit tokens in the X-Firebase-AppCheck header and validate them themselves. For Node.js services in trusted environments such as Cloud Run or Cloud Functions, the Firebase Admin SDK can verify tokens through middleware. Other environments, including Ruby backends, CDN edge runtimes such as Cloudflare Workers, and Apigee API proxies, can validate the JWT-based tokens using Firebase’s public JWKS endpoint, checking the RS256 algorithm, JWT type, issuer, expiration, audience, and optionally the application ID subject. App Check complements Firebase Authentication and Security Rules by helping protect backend resources and limit fraudulent or unauthorized application traffic.

Firebase Summit 2021 was announced as a virtual event scheduled for November 10 at 9:30 a.m. PST, bringing developers together for product updates, training, and discussions about building and scaling apps with Firebase. Preparatory activities included weekly learning pathways beginning October 13, featuring codelabs, articles, interactive videos, quizzes, and opportunities to earn Google developer badges. Community talks on November 3 were set to feature Google Developer Experts discussing topics such as enterprise-scale Firebase applications and authorization models. The summit itself would include a live keynote, live #AskFirebase question-and-answer sessions, and on-demand technical sessions and demos covering new announcements.