Firebase iOS Open Source Development

See the three subsections for details about three different installation methods.

1. Standard pod install
2. Installing from the GitHub repo
3. Experimental Carthage

Standard pod install

Go to https://firebase.google.com/docs/ios/setup.

Installing from GitHub

For releases starting with 5.0.0, the source for each release is also deployed to CocoaPods master and available via standard CocoaPods Podfile syntax.

These instructions can be used to access the Firebase repo at other branches, tags, or commits.

Background

See the Podfile Syntax Reference for instructions and options about overriding pod source locations.

Accessing Firebase Source Snapshots

All of the official releases are tagged in this repo and available via CocoaPods. To access a local source snapshot or unreleased branch, use Podfile directives like the following:

To access FirebaseFirestore via a branch:

pod 'FirebaseCore', :git => 'https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk.git', :branch => 'master'
pod 'FirebaseFirestore', :git => 'https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk.git', :branch => 'master'

To access FirebaseMessaging via a checked out version of the firebase-ios-sdk repo do:

pod 'FirebaseCore', :path => '/path/to/firebase-ios-sdk'
pod 'FirebaseMessaging', :path => '/path/to/firebase-ios-sdk'

Carthage (iOS only)

Instructions for the experimental Carthage distribution are at Carthage.

Rome

Instructions for installing binary frameworks via Rome are at Rome.

Using Firebase from a Framework or a library

Using Firebase from a Framework or a library

To develop Firebase software in this repository, ensure that you have at least the following software:

• Xcode 10.1 (or later)
• CocoaPods 1.7.2 (or later)
• CocoaPods generate

For the pod that you want to develop:

pod gen Firebase{name here}.podspec --local-sources=./ --auto-open --platforms=ios

Note: If the CocoaPods cache is out of date, you may need to run pod repo update before the pod gen command.

Note: Set the --platforms option to macos or tvos to develop/test for those platforms. Since 10.2, Xcode does not properly handle multi-platform CocoaPods workspaces.

Firestore has a self contained Xcode project. See Firestore/README.md.

Development for Catalyst

• pod gen {name here}.podspec --local-sources=./ --auto-open --platforms=ios
• Check the Mac box in the App-iOS Build Settings
• Sign the App in the Settings Signing & Capabilities tab
• Click Pods in the Project Manager
• Add Signing to the iOS host app and unit test targets
• Select the Unit-unit scheme
• Run it to build and test

Adding a New Firebase Pod

See AddNewPod.md.

Code Formatting

To ensure that the code is formatted consistently, run the script ./scripts/style.sh before creating a PR.

Travis will verify that any code changes are done in a style compliant way. Install clang-format and swiftformat. These commands will get the right versions:

brew upgrade https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/c6f1cbd/Formula/clang-format.rb
brew upgrade https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/c13eda8/Formula/swiftformat.rb

Note: if you already have a newer version of these installed you may need to brew switch to this version.

To update this section, find the versions of clang-format and swiftformat.rb to match the versions in the CI failure logs here.

Running Unit Tests

Select a scheme and press Command-u to build a component and run its unit tests.

Viewing Code Coverage

First, make sure that xcov is installed with gem install xcov.

After running the AllUnitTests_iOS scheme in Xcode, execute xcov --workspace Firebase.xcworkspace --scheme AllUnitTests_iOS --output_directory xcov_output at Example/ in the terminal. This will aggregate the coverage, and you can run open xcov_output/index.html to see the results.

Running Sample Apps

In order to run the sample apps and integration tests, you'll need valid GoogleService-Info.plist files for those samples. The Firebase Xcode project contains dummy plist files without real values, but can be replaced with real plist files. To get your own GoogleService-Info.plist files:

1. Go to the Firebase Console
2. Create a new Firebase project, if you don't already have one
3. For each sample app you want to test, create a new Firebase app with the sample app's bundle identifier (e.g. com.google.Database-Example)
4. Download the resulting GoogleService-Info.plist and replace the appropriate dummy plist file (e.g. in Example/Database/App/);

Some sample apps like Firebase Messaging (Example/Messaging/App) require special Apple capabilities, and you will have to change the sample app to use a unique bundle identifier that you can control in your own Apple Developer account.

See the sections below for any special instructions for those components.

Firebase Auth

If you're doing specific Firebase Auth development, see the Auth Sample README for instructions about building and running the FirebaseAuth pod along with various samples and tests.

Firebase Database

To run the Database Integration tests, make your database authentication rules public.

Firebase Storage

To run the Storage Integration tests, follow the instructions in FIRStorageIntegrationTests.m.

Push Notifications

Push notifications can only be delivered to specially provisioned App IDs in the developer portal. In order to actually test receiving push notifications, you will need to:

1. Change the bundle identifier of the sample app to something you own in your Apple Developer account, and enable that App ID for push notifications.
2. You'll also need to upload your APNs Provider Authentication Key or certificate to the Firebase Console at Project Settings > Cloud Messaging > [Your Firebase App].
3. Ensure your iOS device is added to your Apple Developer portal as a test device.

iOS Simulator

The iOS Simulator cannot register for remote notifications, and will not receive push notifications. In order to receive push notifications, you'll have to follow the steps above and run the app on a physical device.

We've seen an amazing amount of interest and contributions to improve the Firebase SDKs, and we are very grateful! We'd like to empower as many developers as we can to be able to use Firebase and participate in the Firebase community.

tvOS, macOS, watchOS and Catalyst

Thanks to contributions from the community, many of Firebase SDKs now compile, run unit tests, and work on tvOS, macOS, watchOS and Catalyst.

For tvOS, checkout the Sample. For watchOS, currently only Messaging and Storage (and their dependencies) have limited support. Checkout the Independent Watch App Sample.

Keep in mind that macOS, tvOS, watchOS and Catalyst are not officially supported by Firebase, and this repository is actively developed primarily for iOS. While we can catch basic unit test issues with Travis, there may be some changes where the SDK no longer works as expected on macOS, tvOS or watchOS. If you encounter this, please file an issue.

During app setup in the console, you may get to a step that mentions something like "Checking if the app has communicated with our servers". This relies on Analytics and will not work on macOS/tvOS/watchOS/Catalyst. It's safe to ignore the message and continue, the rest of the SDKs will work as expected.

To install, add a subset of the following to the Podfile:

pod 'Firebase/ABTesting'     # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Auth'          # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Crashlytics'   # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Database'      # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Firestore'     # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Functions'     # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Messaging'
pod 'Firebase/RemoteConfig'  # No watchOS support yet
pod 'Firebase/Storage'

Additional Catalyst Notes

• FirebaseAuth and FirebaseMessaging require adding Keychain Sharing Capability to Build Settings.
• FirebaseFirestore requires signing the gRPC Resource target.

See Roadmap for more about the Firebase iOS SDK Open Source plans and directions.