Understand Firebase for C++

As you’re developing your C++ project using Firebase, you might discover concepts that are unfamiliar or specific to Firebase. This page aims to answer those questions or point you to resources to learn more.

Feel free to visit one of our online communities if you have questions about a topic not covered on this page. We’ll also update this page with new topics periodically, so check back to see if we’ve added the topic you want to learn about!

Looking for how to get started with Firebase in your C++ projects? Check out our Getting Started Guide.

Firebase library support by platform

The following table describes which Firebase libraries are compatible with which platforms. Currently desktop support is intended for development purposes -- allowing you to test features on your development machine without deploying to a phone or tablet if permitted by your toolchain.

Platform	Android	iOS	tvOS	macOS (beta)	Windows (beta)	Linux (beta)
A/B Testing			v8.3.0+
Analytics			v8.7.0+
App Distribution			v8.3.0+
Authentication			v8.3.0+
Cloud Firestore			v8.3.0+
Cloud Functions			v8.3.0+
Cloud Messaging			v8.3.0+
Cloud Storage			v8.3.0+
Crashlytics			v8.3.0+
Dynamic Links
Google Mobile Ads
Realtime Database			v8.3.0+
Remote Config			v8.3.0+

Note: Crashlytics can detect and symbolicate C++ crashes on iOS, tvOS, and Android. To customize crash reports, though, you must use the Apple platforms (iOS+) SDK or the crashlytics.h header for Android.

Google services – config files

As part of adding Firebase to your C++ project, you need to add a Firebase configuration file.

• To ship a C++ game on a mobile platform, follow the instructions for Apple platforms (iOS+) and/or Android to include the appropriate Firebase configuration file in your project.

• To develop for desktop, you'll need to create a desktop version of the "mobile" Firebase configuration file:

  • If you added the Android google-services.json file — When you run your app, Firebase locates this mobile file, then automatically generates a desktop Firebase config file (google-services-desktop.json).

  • If you added the Apple GoogleService-Info.plist file — Before you run your app, you need to convert this mobile file to a desktop Firebase config file. To convert the file, run the following command from the same directory as your GoogleService-Info.plist file:

  generate_xml_from_google_services_json.py --plist -i GoogleService-Info.plist
  

  Note: The desktop Firebase C++ SDK will search the current working directory first for google-services-desktop.json then for google-services.json. You can also manually load a configuration or create it in code.

If you want to use multiple Firebase projects in a single app, visit the documentation for configuring multiple projects.

Note: The Firebase configuration files contain unique, but non-secret identifiers for your project. To learn more about these config files, visit Understand Firebase Projects.

Open source resources for the Firebase C++ SDK

Firebase supports open source development, and we encourage contributions and feedback.

Firebase SDKs

The open source C++ SDKs are available in our GitHub repository.

Note the following about how we build the C++ SDKs for Firebase:

• The C++ SDKs for Windows, Linux, and macOS are entirely open source and hosted in our GitHub repo.
• The C++ SDKs for iOS, tvOS, and Android are built on top of the open source iOS SDKs and Android SDKs.

Quickstart samples

Firebase maintains a collection of quickstart samples for Firebase APIs on C++. Find these quickstarts in our public Firebase GitHub quickstart repository.

Each quickstart includes an Xcode project for iOS, an Android Studio project, and a CMakeLists.txt file that can be used to generate a desktop project (if the Firebase product itself supports desktop targets).