What is Firebase Authentication?

Nowadays, most apps need to know the identity of a user. Knowing a user’s identity allows an app to securely save user data in the cloud and provide the same personalized experience across all of the user’s devices.

Firebase Authentication provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular federated identity providers like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and more.

Key abilities

There are two ways you can sign in to your firebase app either by using FirebaseUI as a complete drop-in auth solution or by using the Firebase Authentication SDK to manually integrate one or several sign-in methods into your app.

FirebaseUIAuth

• Drop-in authentication solution: This is the recommended way to add a complete sign-in method to your app.

FirebaseUI provides a drop-in auth solution that handles the UI flows for signing in users with email addresses and passwords, phone numbers, and including Google Sign-In and Facebook Login.

Firebase SDK Authentication

• Email and password-based authentication: Authenticate users with their email addresses and passwords. Firebase Authentication also handles sending password reset emails.
• Federated identity provider integration: The Firebase Authentication SDK provides methods that allow users to sign in with their Google, Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub accounts.
• Phone number authentication: Authenticate users by sending SMS messages to their phones.
• Custom auth system integration: Connect your app’s existing sign-in system to the Firebase Authentication SDK and gain access to Firebase Realtime Database and other Firebase services.
• Anonymous auth: Use features that require authentication without requiring users to sign in first by creating temporary anonymous accounts. If the user later chooses to sign up, you can upgrade the anonymous account to a regular account, so the user can continue where they left off.

How does it work?

To sign a user into your app, you first get authentication credentials from the user. These credentials can be the user’s email address and password, or an OAuth token from a federated identity provider (Google, Facebook, Twitter, or GitHub). Then, you pass these credentials to the Firebase Authentication SDK. The Firebase backend services will then verify those credentials and return a response to the client.

After a successful sign in, you can access the user’s basic profile information, and you can control the user’s access to data stored in other Firebase products.

Why Firebase?

Firebase Authentication provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app, offering a more engaging experience across different platforms and between apps. It supports authentication using passwords, popular federated identity providers such as Google; Facebook; and Twitter, and more, making it easy for users to access your content and get into your apps quickly and securely.

Features are:

• Integrates tightly with other Firebase features.
• Uses industry standards such as OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, so it can be easily integrated with your custom backend.
• Offers two development options either FirebaseUI as a complete drop-in authentication solution or the Firebase Authentication SDK to manually integrate one or several sign-in methods into your app.
• Provides secure authentication that makes sign-in easy for your users using their Google account, which they already use Gmail, Google Play, and other Google services. It also supports authentication using passwords and popular federated identity providers such as Facebook and Twitter.
• Enables a seamless app experience across devices and into your website, securely from a one-time consent.
• Connects users securely with Google services. Share with Google contacts, save files to Drive, add events to Calendar, and more.