Questions? Find me on twitter at @tylermcginnis33
React.js makes managing state easy to reason about. Firebase makes persisting your data easy to implement. re-base, inspired by Relay, combines the benefits of React and Firebase by allowing each component to specify its own data dependency. Forget about your data persistence and focus on what really matters, your application's state.
I spent a few weeks trying to figure out the cleanest way to implement Firebase into my React/Flux application. After struggling for a bit, I tweeted my frustrations. I was enlightened to the fact that Firebase and Flux really don't work well together. It makes sense why they don't work together, because they're both trying to accomplish roughly the same thing. So I did away with my reliance upon Flux and tried to think of a clean way to implement React with Firebase. I came across ReactFire built by Jacob Wenger at Firebase and loved his idea. Sync a Firebase endpoint with a property on your component's state. So whenever your data changes, your state will be updated. Simple as that. The problem with ReactFire is because it uses Mixins, it's not compatible with ES6 classes. After chatting with Jacob Turner, we wanted to create a way to allow the one way binding of ReactFire with ES6 classes along some more features like two way data binding and listening to Firebase endpoints without actually binding a state property to them. Thus, re-base was built.
- syncState: Two way data binding between any property on your component's state and any endpoint in Firebase. Use the same API you're used to to update your component's state (setState), and Firebase will also update.
- bindToState: One way data binding. Whenever your Firebase endpoint changes, the property on your state will update as well.
- listenTo: Whenever your Firebase endpoint changes, it will invoke a callback passing it the new data from Firebase.
- fetch: Retrieve data from Firebase without setting up any binding or listeners.
- post: Add new data to Firebase.
- push: Push new child data to Firebase.
- removeBinding: Remove all of the Firebase listeners when your component unmounts.
- reset: Removes all of the Firebase listeners and resets the singleton (for testing purposes).
$ npm install re-baseFor more in depth examples of the API, see the examples folder.
Accepts a firebase URL as its only parameter and returns a singleton with the re-base API.
- firebaseUrl:
- type: string
- The absolute, HTTPS URL of your Firebase project
An object with syncState, bindToState, listenTo, fetch, post, push, removeBinding, and reset methods.
var Rebase = require('re-base');
var base = Rebase.createClass('https://myapp.firebaseio.com');Allows you to set up two way data binding between your component's state and your Firebase. Whenever your Firebase changes, your component's state will change. Whenever your component's state changes, Firebase will change.
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint to which you'd like to bind your component's state
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- context: (object - required) The context of your component
- state: (string - required) The state property you want to sync with Firebase
- asArray: (boolean - optional) Returns the Firebase data at the specified endpoint as an Array instead of an Object
- queries: (object - optional) Queries to be used with your read operations. See Query Options for more details.
- then: (function - optional) The callback function that will be invoked when the initial listener is established with Firebase. Typically used (with syncState) to change
this.state.loadingto false.
An object which you can pass to removeBinding when your component unmounts to remove the Firebase listeners.
componentDidMount(){
base.syncState(`shoppingList`, {
context: this,
state: 'items',
asArray: true
});
}
addItem(newItem){
this.setState({
items: this.state.items.concat([newItem]) //updates Firebase and the local state
});
}One way data binding from Firebase to your component's state. Allows you to bind a component's state property to a Firebase endpoint so whenever that Firebase endpoint changes, your component's state will be updated with that change.
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint that you'd like your component's state property to listen for changes
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- context: (object - required) The context of your component
- state: (string - required) The state property you want to sync with Firebase
- asArray: (boolean - optional) Returns the Firebase data at the specified endpoint as an Array instead of an Object
- queries: (object - optional) Queries to be used with your read operations. See Query Options for more details.
An object which you can pass to removeBinding when your component unmounts to remove the Firebase listeners.
componentDidMount(){
base.bindToState('tasks', {
context: this,
state: 'tasks',
asArray: true
});
}Allows you to listen to Firebase endpoints without binding those changes to a state property. Instead, a callback will be invoked with the newly updated data.
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint which contains the data with which you'd like to invoke your callback function
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- context: (object - required) The context of your component
- asArray: (boolean - optional) Returns the Firebase data at the specified endpoint as an Array instead of an Object
- then: (function - required) The callback function that will be invoked with the data from the specified endpoint when the endpoint changes
- queries: (object - optional) Queries to be used with your read operations. See Query Options for more details.
An object which you can pass to removeBinding when your component unmounts to remove the Firebase listeners.
componentDidMount(){
base.listenTo('votes', {
context: this,
asArray: true,
then(votesData){
var total = 0;
votesData.forEach((vote, index) => {
total += vote
});
this.setState({total});
}
})
}Allows you to retrieve the data from a Firebase endpoint just once without subscribing or listening for data changes.
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint which contains the data you're wanting to fetch
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- context: (object - required) The context of your component
- asArray: (boolean - optional) Returns the Firebase data at the specified endpoint as an Array instead of an Object
- then: (function - required) The callback function that will be invoked with the data from the specified endpoint when the endpoint changes
- queries: (object - optional) Queries to be used with your read operations. See Query Options for more details.
No return value
getSales(){
base.fetch('sales', {
context: this,
asArray: true,
then(data){
console.log(data);
}
});
}Allows you to update a Firebase endpoint with new data. Replace all the data at this endpoint with the new data
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint that you'd like to update with the new data
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- data: (any - required) The data you're wanting to persist to Firebase
- then: (function - optional) A callback that will get invoked once the new data has been saved to Firebase
No return value
addUser(){
base.post(`users/${userId}`, {
data: {name: 'Tyler McGinnis', age: 25},
then(){
Router.transitionTo('dashboard');
}
});
}Allows you to add data to a Firebase endpoint. Adds data to a child of the endpoint with a new Firebase push key
- endpoint - type: string - The relative Firebase endpoint that you'd like to push the new data to
- options
- type: object
- properties:
- data: (any - required) The data you're wanting to persist to Firebase
- then: (function - optional) A callback that will get invoked once the new data has been saved to Firebase
A Firebase reference for the generated location
addBear(){
base.push('bears', {
data: {name: 'George', type: 'Grizzly'},
then(){
Router.transitionTo('dashboard');
}
});
}Remove the listeners to Firebase when your component unmounts.
- ref - type: Object - The return value of syncState, bindToState, or listenTo
No return value
componentDidMount(){
this.ref = base.syncState('users', {
context: this,
state: 'users'
});
}
componentWillUnmount(){
base.removeBinding(this.ref);
}Removes every Firebase listener and resets all private variables. Used for testing purposes.
No Arguments
No return value
Use the query option to utilize the Firebase Query API. For a list of available queries and how they work, see the Firebase docs.
Queries are accepted in the options object of each read method (syncState, bindToState, listenTo, and fetch). The object should have one or more keys of the type of query you wish to run, with the value being the value for the query. For example:
base.syncState('users', {
context: this,
state: 'users',
asArray: true,
queries: {
orderByChild: 'iq',
limitToLast: 3
}
})The binding above will sort the users endpoint by iq, retrieve the last three (or, three with highest iq), and bind it to the component's users state. NOTE: This query is happening within Firebase. The only data that will be retrieved are the three users with the highest iq.
re-base exposes Firebase's web client authWithPassword, authWithCustomToken, authWithOAuthPopup, authWithOAuthRedirect, authWithOAuthToken methods to allow user authentication. getAuth is also exposed to access the current authentication state.
// Simple email authentication
base.authWithPassword({
email : '[email protected]',
password : 'correcthorsebatterystaple'
}, authHandler);
// Authentication via a custom authentication token
base.authWithCustomToken(token, authHandler);
// Authentication via OAuth providers ("facebook", "github", "google", or "twitter")
base.authWithOAuthPopup("<provider>", authHandler);
base.authWithOAuthRedirect("<provider>", authHandler);
base.authWithOAuthToken("<provider>", token, authHandler);
// Log a user out
base.unauth()
// Get authentication information
var authData = base.getAuth();// Listen to authentication
function authDataCallback(authData) {
if (authData) {
console.log("User " + authData.uid + " is logged in with " + authData.provider);
} else {
console.log("User is logged out");
}
}
var ref = new Firebase("https://<YOUR-FIREBASE-APP>.firebaseio.com");
ref.onAuth(authDataCallback);re-base exposes createUser, removeUser, resetPassword and changePassword methods for user management.
// Create
base.createUser({
email: '[email protected]',
password: 'correcthorsebatterystaple'
}, userHandler);
// Remove
base.removeUser({
email: '[email protected]',
password: 'correcthorsebatterystaple'
}, errorHandler);
// Reset Password
base.resetPassword({
email: '[email protected]'
}, errorHandler);
// Change Password
base.changePassword({
email: '[email protected]',
oldPassword: 'correcthorsebatterystaple',
newPassword: 'chipsahoy'
}, errorHandler);npm install- Edit
src/rebase.js - Add/edit tests in
tests/specs/re-base.spec.js npm run buildnpm run test
re-base is inspired by ReactFire from Firebase. Jacob Turner is also a core contributor and this wouldn't have been possible without his assistance.
MIT