In this section, we are going to create a new Firebase account and gain access to the Firebase console. The good news is that all you need is an active Google account. Let's get started:
- Navigate to https://firebase.google.com/ and click the Get started button:
- Click the Create a project button:
- Fill in the form; call the project electron-chat-app.
- Take note of the unique project ID value that's generated.
Your project's globally unique identifier is used in your real-time database URL, Firebase Hosting subdomains, and more. You cannot change your project ID after the project has been created.
It has a value of electron-chat-app-df7eb, but this value varies for every project. Leave it as it is and click Continue:
- Now, we need to choose whether we want to enable Google Analytics for our project or not. Select Not right now since we aren't going to look at analytics in this chapter:
You can always enable the Setup Google Analytics for my project feature later when you get more familiar with Firebase.
- Click the Create project button.
- It may take a few seconds to create your new project. Watch the animated progress bar; it should show the Your project is ready label as soon as your project has been generated:
- After clicking Continue, you should be able to see the console dashboard for your application:
Firebase provides multiple pricing plans; find out more at https://firebase.google.com/pricing. What you need to know is that, by default, every Firebase application gets the free "Spark" plan, which has generous limits for hobbyists. This plan is more than enough for you to get started with application development and testing.
At this point, you have an empty electron-chat-app project. At the time of writing, you have the option to create and register four different types of applications:
- An iOS application
- An Android application
- A web application
- A Unity game for either iOS or Android
Now that we have created a Firebase account, we are going to create a web application entry.