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SETUP.md

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Setup

How to set up QtFirebase for inclusion and to utilize Firebase modules in your project.

For a working and up-to-date example that can be compiled in Qt Creator please follow the Quick start section found in the QtFirebaseExample README. (The example app links back here in some places - but not all). It's strongly adviced to see how the example app is setup in-order to avoid any missing entries.

Prerequisities

QtFirebase rely on a relativly large software stack. Many common errors people encounter with QtFirebase is due to little or no knownledge of the complete stack of technology used. It's therefore stongly adviced that developers, as a minimum, know or familiarize themselves with the following software in general before diving into the project.

In general Firebase, Firebase C++ SDK, Qt, QML, QMake

Android specific Gradle, Android SDK, Android NDK, Java

iOS specific XCode, Firebase iOS SDK

Base setup

Clone the QtFirebase project

Clone into the "extensions" or "vendor" folder or into another folder of your choice. Here we use the QtFirebaseExample structure.

cd /path/to/projects/QtFirebaseExample/extensions
git clone [email protected]:Larpon/QtFirebase.git

Download and extract the latest version of Google's Firebase C++ SDK.

cd /path/to/download
curl --location https://firebase.google.com/download/cpp --output "firebase_cpp_sdk.zip"
unzip firebase_cpp_sdk.zip -d /path/to/sdk
rm firebase_cpp_sdk.zip

Add symlink OR set QTFIREBASE_SDK_PATH variable

If you have multiple projects using QtFirebase it's a space-saver to have the Firebase C++ SDK (~832 MB) in one place.

You can either symlink the Firebase C++ SDK to the default search path OR set the QTFIREBASE_SDK_PATH variable to the absolute path of the SDK in your project's .pro file for the app build.

Symlink method

Please note that symlinks will only work for *nix host platforms (Linux, macOS)

ln -s /path/to/sdk/firebase_cpp_sdk /path/to/projects/QtFirebase/firebase_cpp_sdk

QTFIREBASE_SDK_PATH variable method

Open your project with Qt Creator. Navigate to the .pro (sub)project file in the Project pane.

QtFirebaseExample
|_...
|_App
    |_App.pro

Locate the lines:

# NOTE QTFIREBASE_SDK_PATH can be symlinked to match $$PWD/firebase_cpp_sdk
...

Change it to match your path(s) - or leave it to use default $$PWD/firebase_cpp_sdk

QTFIREBASE_SDK_PATH = /path/to/sdk/firebase_cpp_sdk

(Example)

Choose Firebase modules

In your project's .pro (sub)project file (before including qtfirebase.pri) - choose the modules to include:

QTFIREBASE_CONFIG += analytics messaging admob remote_config

(Example)

include QtFirebase

Finally include qtfirebase.pri in your project's .pro file.

include(/path/to/QtFirebase/qtfirebase.pri)

(Example)

Note on building

If you're planing on compiling QtFirebase as part of a library in your project, please be aware that QtFirebase in this case will omit registering of it's QML types. This is due to how Q_COREAPP_STARTUP_FUNCTION works. So for auto registering of QML to work - QtFirebase need to be built as an app. Otherwise you must register the types manually.

Desktop specific setup

Currently we haven't tested the parts of Firebase C++ SDK that have desktop support.

QtFirebase provides stub implementations ("empty shells" or "placeholders") for desktop builds and no firebase libraries are linked to the application - this may change depending on what parts of the SDK Google make available for desktop builds in the future.

Android specific setup

When building QtFirebase for Android targets a few extra steps is needed. Please see SETUP_ANDROID.

iOS specific setup

When building QtFirebase for iOS targets a few extra steps is needed. Please see SETUP_IOS.

What to do next

Congratulations! You fought through the setup - pad yourself on the back!

This is kind of where we leave you off as a developer. Why? Because you're entering Google's domain - and your project's specific setup. Firebase and AdMob are (mostly) closed platforms. Any problems with Ad fill-rates and backend messaging are out of scope for this project. The QtFirebase project only provide Qt wrapper classes - that's it.

If you want to know more about how things really work please refer to the official documentation of the respective projects:

Documentation:

Firebase Q/A:

Community:

Troubleshooting

A few hints and ideas to what could be wrong:

  • Use QtFirebaseExample as a reference project, not a base for your own app.
  • Double check that no QtFirebaseExample app id's are left over anywhere. Use grep -nr 'blackgrain' in the project root or search project wide for "blackgrain" in your IDE to try and identify possible places.
  • Make sure you replace com.blackgrain.android.firebasetest and com.google.android.gms.ads.ca-app-pub-... with your own ids.
  • Remember that Java expects directories to match your id e.g: com.blackgrain.android.firebasetest.Main is in com/blackgrain/android/firebasetest/Main.java (note how they match).
  • Wipe your builds now and then to make sure qmake isn't using old/cached data.
  • Triple check that you have Google Play Services installed.
  • Triple check that you're not blocking ads or other network routes on your phone or WiFi/network.
  • Triple check that you're allowing your app to actually receive notifications (permissions, volume, flight mode, custom apps that block XYZ feature).
  • This URL is not a service I provide - it's only there for me to test QtFirebase for this project.
  • Make sure both QtFirebase and QtFirebaseExample is on master branch - they should always match.
  • This is a spare time pet project - I can't and won't go through your project code, sorry 😃
  • QtFirebaseExample is provided as a working example, a reference, of a working setup. Qt projects can literally be setup in a million different ways - we haven't got resources to provide support for individual cases.
  • We're always open to suggestions on how to improve the documentation or setup in general 😃
  • If you still think something is wrong with QtFirebase try and see how Google currently does things - also with Messaging