Combining Firebase Auth with Firebase Realtime Database or Google Cloud Datastore?

Question

I'm planning a web application that requires user auth, plus the ability to display data for the users that is stored in a database. No interaction between the users is needed (yet), however the users should be able create objects and query their "own" objects. For example I list 10 book names (10 book objects), and User A should be able to pick a book and create a new object, call it userNoteObject that contains the name of a choosen book and a short note (that he/she writes).

With a basic pseudo code one book object would look like this:

bookObj = {"id": 1, "name": "book name"}

And the user's note object would be something like this:

userNoteObject = {
             "id": 1, 
             "book_name": "random book name", 
             "owner_userid": "a1b2c3d", 
             "note": "some random string"
                  }

With MySQL I would create three tables, one for the users and one for the userNoteObject -s and another for the bookObj -s. Everytime an user saves a note, I would add it to the table that lists the saved notes. Then I can simply query the notes that belongs to X user based on the user's owner_userid . It's a quite simple functionality.

After reading about the possibilities I've made a decision to go with Firebase Auth (because in the future I might need Android and iOS compatibility) + Google Cloud Datastore or Firebase Realtime Database . However I'm a little bit scared about the Realtime Database of Firebase since I've never worked any DB like it. I also like to be able to modify records manually with something like PhpMyAdmin and I assume Cloud Datastore has a visual interface like that.

I'm familiar with JSON handling and creating JSON files, however the JSON based database is strange for me at the moment. Therefore I'm thinking about that maybe the other option would be a better choice. It's very important that I don't need realtime db features. I would load X number of entries into the table that holds the bookObj -s and sometimes update them. I assume when the user creates an userNoteObject it would be saved quickly with both and after deleting an userNoteObject I could refresh the page close to realtime with Datastore. But the table that holds the book objects must be able to store millions of entries easily.

So the important things:

• One db table should be able to handle millions of records easily
• Easy as possible querying
• Visual interface for the DB (if it's possible)
• I don't need realtime features like dynamic game score display/saving

Other info:

• I would like to use Angular.js
• I'm familiar with Python if it can help in something

So my question is that which database would be better for my needs? At the moment I say Datastore, but I'm totally new with these services so I'm not really against the Realtime Database, but Datastore looks more suitable since it has a visual interface. However I'm also not sure that how would work Datastore with Firebase. If there is a third option like combining both, Realtime Database for the objects save by the user and the static objects for Datastore for example, I would love to hear about it too. My overall goal is to be able to write and query the db easy and fast as it's possible and easily use it with Firebase auth.

UPDATE: I just discovered Firebase's Cloud Firestore, so if it can be more useful I could use it.

Answer 1

If you are going to use Firebase I would recommend you use Cloud Firestore instead of either Cloud Datastore or Firebase realtime database. You get the benefits of a real-time database plus a true document based JSON data store. The one downside is that you don`t have a UI to interact with the data. Datastore has one but its not as robust as say PHPMyAdmin. And since these are NoSQL datastores SQL support is pretty limited.

If you really want a true relational back-end you could try Cloud SQL which is basically MySQL running on Google Servers.

Answer 2

For the Firestore console/UI, see https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/using-console . Is that the kind of thing you're looking for?