[MUSIC]

Hello, everyone.

My name is Michael Lustig and in this workshop we're going to create a realtime

messaging app using the Firebase Realtime Database.

If you're curious about what exactly Firebase is in depth and what other

features Firebase offers please check out the workshop linked in the teachers notes.

In this particular workshop, we're going to focus on using FireBase

in an Android application, rather than going over its entire feature set.

As I mentioned, we'll be creating a real time messaging application for Android.

In the app, you'll be able to create a username,

and then send messages to everyone else that has your app installed.

Since you'll be creating your own FireBase project, on the FireBase console.

You'll only see the messages from the people that you've shared your app with.

In other words,

you won't see the messages from everyone who goes through this workshop.

That would certainly be possible, but

we thought that might scale way out of hand too quickly.

When I'm learning,

I like to see what the finished product will look like before I get started.

That helps to give me a clear view on the end goal of what the lesson's

going to teach.

So let's go ahead and check out the app in action.

As you can see, when I first install the app I need to create a username.

In this workshop, we don't perform any logic for verifying usernames, but

try to pick something unique to you.

Firebase provides great user authentication but in this workshop,

we're going to stick with just learning about the real time database capabilities.

Stay tuned for workshops covering Firebase's other great features.

Once I've chosen the username,

I can log in where I'm taking the screen full of messages.

I'll bring up another emulator to show you how cool this truly is.

As well as my Firebase console open to the database page so

that you can see that all of this is truly happening in real time.

I've already logged in on this other emulator.

So once I send a message it should almost instantly appear in both the Firebase

console as well as on the list of messages on both emulators.

Let's go ahead and give that a try.

I'll type a message, Treehouse is super rad, and click the send button.

Viola, the messages appear on both the emulators and

our database flashes green I know that this app is fairly simple.

But every time I use Firebase, I'm amazed by how much complexity they've alleviated

by handling all of the issues that arise from an app with a real time requirement.

Now that you've got a better idea of exactly the project that you'll be

creating in the workshop.

I'm going to show you how to set up the starter files on your machine to

follow along.

While it isn't vital that you follow along, writing the code along with me will

be the best way to truly understand how everything works