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YOU'RE VIEW ING THE LEGACY DOC S . T HEY ARE DEPRECAT ED AS OF M AY 18, 2 0 16 .
These docs are for version 2.5.2 and below of the Java SDK. Go to our current docs, or see our Android migration

guide.

5 MINUTE QUICKSTART

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 Create an account
The first thing you need to do to get started with Firebase is sign up for a free
account. A brand new Firebase app will automatically be created for you with its
own unique URL ending in firebaseio.com. We'll use this URL to store and sync
data.

 Install Firebase 
To use Firebase features in your Android application you can add a dependency
to Gradle or Maven in your project or download the latest SDK.

As of version 1.1, Firebase has different SDKs for Android and the JVM. This sections
demonstrates Android. If you are developing on the JVM please add a dependency to
firebase-client-jvm instead.

Using Gradle or Maven

We publish builds of our Android and Java SDK to the Maven central
repository. To install the library inside Android Studio, you can simply
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declare it as dependency in your build.gradle file:

1. dependencies {
2. compile 'com.firebase:firebase-client-android:2.5.2+'
3. }

If you are getting a build error complaining about duplicate files you can
choose to exclude those files by adding the packagingOptions directive

to your build.gradle file:

1. android {
2. ...
3. packagingOptions {
4. exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
5. exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE-FIREBASE.txt'
6. exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
7. }
8. }

If you use Maven to build your application, you can add the following
dependency to your pom.xml:

1. <dependency>
2. <groupId>com.firebase</groupId>
3. <artifactId>firebase-client-android</artifactId>
4. <version>[2.5.2,)</version>
5. </dependency>

Download and Install

There is also a plain Java

SDK for the JVM available.

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You can grab the latest Firebase SDK here:

Download Firebase Android SDK

After downloading the JAR, place it on your application's classpath.

Typically, this is in your libs folder. Depending on your IDE, you may
need to explicitly add the library to your project as a dependency.

 Add Android Permissions

The Firebase library requires the android.permission.INTERNET permission to
operate. Your app will not work unless you add this permission to your
AndroidManifest.xml file:

1. <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

 Setup Firebase on Android

This step is only required on
Android and not necessary
on the JVM.

The Firebase library must be initialized once with an Android context. This must
happen before any Firebase app reference is created or used. You can add the
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setup code to your Android Application's or Activity's onCreate method.

1. @Override
2. public void onCreate() {
3. super.onCreate();
4. Firebase.setAndroidContext(this);
5. // other setup code
6. }

 Read & Write to your Firebase Database

To read and write data from your Firebase database, we need to first create a
reference to it. We do this by passing the URL of your database into the Firebase
constructor:

1. Firebase myFirebaseRef = new Firebase("https://<YOUR-FIREBASE-APP>.firebaseio.c

There are several other ways to create a reference to a location in your

database. These are all explained in our Understanding Data document.

Writing Data
Once we have a reference to your data, we can write any Boolean,

Long, Double, Map<String, Object> or List object to it using

setValue():

1. myFirebaseRef.child("message").setValue("Do you have data? You'll love Fir

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Our documentation on saving data explains the different write methods

our API offers and how to know when the data has been successfully
written to your Firebase database.

Reading Data
Reading data from your Firebase database is accomplished by attaching
an event listener and handling the resulting events. Assuming we
already wrote to myFirebaseRef above, we can retrieve the message

value by using the addValueEventListener method:

1. myFirebaseRef.child("message").addValueEventListener(new ValueEventListene
2.
3. @Override
4. public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot snapshot) {
5. System.out.println(snapshot.getValue()); //prints "Do you have data?
6. }
7.
8. @Override public void onCancelled(FirebaseError error) { }
9.
10. });

Call getValue() on the DataSnapshot returned from the callback to access the
returned object.

In the example above, the value event will fire once for the initial state of
the data, and then again every time the value of that data changes. You
can learn more about the various event types and how to handle event
data in our documentation on reading data.

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 Authenticate Your Users

Firebase provides full support for authenticating users with Email & Password,
Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, Google, or your existing authentication system.

To get started with Email & Password auth, enable the Email & Password
provider in your Firebase app's dashboard:

1. Choose the Login & Auth tab.

2. Select the Email & Password tab and enable authentication.

Now that the authentication provider is enabled you can create a new user:

1. myFirebaseRef.createUser("bobtony@firebase.com", "correcthorsebatterystaple"
2. @Override
3. public void onSuccess(Map<String, Object> result) {
4. System.out.println("Successfully created user account with uid: " +
5. }
6. @Override
7. public void onError(FirebaseError firebaseError) {
8. // there was an error
9. }
10. });

Once you've created your first user, you can log them in using the
authWithPassword method.

Learn how to authenticate via Facebook, Twitter, Google or your own custom
system in our User Authentication guide.

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 Secure Your Data

Use our powerful expression-based Security and Firebase Rules to control
access to your data and validate input:

1. {
2. ".read": true,
3. ".write": "auth.uid === 'admin'",
4. ".validate": "newData.isString() && newData.val().length < 500"
5. }

Firebase enforces your Security and Firebase Rules consistently whenever data
is accessed. The rules language is designed to be both powerful and flexible, so
that you can maintain fine-grained control over your application's data.

 What's Next?
Read the Development Guide

View the full Java API

Explore our code examples

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