how to set up firebase with ionic 2 / angular 2 an

Question

Making transition from ionic 1 to ionic 2 and was curious about how to set up something like firebase import * as Firebase from 'somewhere/foo/'; using their typescript example.

1. Is bower the standard way of installing js dependencies in in ionic 2 or should I be using some other build chain/tool for adding something like Firebase?

2. Should I use bower install to install the firebase libraries or should point directly to a firebase cdn script source?

3. Should I using typings to install firebase typescript definitions?

This is the old code from the firebase tutorial https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/libraries/ionic/guide.html

index.html

<!-- AngularFire -->
<script src="https://cdn.firebase.com/libs/angularfire/1.2.0/angularfire.min.js"></script>

app.js

angular.module("starter", ["ionic", "firebase"])

which just includes cdn references to the Firebase library. How would we do this in ionic 2 and typescript

Answer 1

There is no bootstrap in ionic2 apps...

• you can load up the npm modules for angularfire2 and firebase
• set the providers on the app component
• specify your app URL

app.ts

import 'es6-shim';
import {App, Platform} from 'ionic-angular';
import {StatusBar} from 'ionic-native';
import {HomePage} from './pages/home/home';


import {FIREBASE_PROVIDERS, defaultFirebase, AngularFire} from 'angularfire2';

@App({
    template: '<ion-nav [root]="rootPage"></ion-nav>',
    providers: [
        FIREBASE_PROVIDERS,
        defaultFirebase('https://[YOUR-APP].firebaseio.com/')
    ],
    config: {} // http://ionicframework.com/docs/v2/api/config/Config/
})
export class MyApp {
    rootPage: any = HomePage;

    constructor(platform: Platform) {
        platform.ready().then(() => {
            // Okay, so the platform is ready and our plugins are available.
            // Here you can do any higher level native things you might need.
            StatusBar.styleDefault();
        });
    }
}

home.ts

import {Page} from 'ionic-angular';
import {Component} from 'angular2/core';
import {AngularFire} from 'angularfire2';
import {Observable} from 'rxjs/Observable';

@Page({
    template: `
        <ion-navbar *navbar>
            <ion-title>
                Home
            </ion-title>
        </ion-navbar>

        <ion-content class="home">
            <ion-card  *ngFor="#item of bookItems | async">
                <ion-card-header>
                    {{item.volumeInfo.title}}
                </ion-card-header>
                <ion-card-content>
                    {{item.volumeInfo.description}}
                </ion-card-content>
            </ion-card>
        </ion-content>`
})
export class HomePage {
    bookItems: Observable<any[]>;
    constructor(af: AngularFire) {
        this.bookItems = af.list('/bookItems');
    }
}

full source in git repo - aaronksaunders/ionic2-angularfire-sample

You can listen for authentication events like this

ngOnInit() {

    // subscribe to the auth object to check for the login status
    // of the user, if logged in, save some user information and
    // execute the firebase query...
    // .. otherwise
    // show the login modal page
    this.auth.subscribe((data) => {
        console.log("in auth subscribe", data)
        if (data) {
            this.authInfo = data.password
            this.bookItems = this.af.list('/bookItems');
        } else {
            this.authInfo = null
            this.displayLoginModal()
        }
    })
}

See Code Here

Answer 2

You need to configure both Firebase and Angularfire2 into your SystemJS configuration:

System.config({
  map: {
    firebase: '/node_modules/firebase/lib/firebase-web.js',
    angularfire2: ' node_modules/angularfire2'
  },
  packages: {      
    angularfire2: {
      main: 'angularfire2.js',
      defaultExtension: 'js'
    },app: {
      format: 'register',
      defaultExtension: 'js'
    }
  },
});

This way you will be able to AngularFire2.

The first thing then is to specify the Angularfire2 providers when bootstrapping your application:

(...)
import {FIREBASE_PROVIDERS, defaultFirebase, AngularFire} from 'angularfire2';

bootstrap(AppComponent, [
  FIREBASE_PROVIDERS,
  defaultFirebase('https://<your-firebase>.firebaseio.com'),
  (...)
]);

You can then inject the AngularFire class:

(...)
import {AngularFire} from 'angularfire2';

@Component({
  (...)
})
export class AppComponent {
  constructor(private af: AngularFire) {

  }
}