Get Started with Firebase Remote Config for Unity

You can use Firebase Remote Config to define parameters in your app and update their values in the cloud, allowing you to modify the appearance and behavior of your app without distributing an app update.

The Remote Config library is used to store in-app default parameter values, fetch updated parameter values from the Remote Config backend, and control when fetched values are made available to your app. To learn more, see Remote Config loading strategies.

This guide walks you through the steps to get started and provides some sample code, all of which is available to clone or download from the firebase/quickstart-unity GitHub repository.

Add Remote Config to your app

Before you can use Remote Config, you need to:

  • Register your Unity project and configure it to use Firebase.

    • If your Unity project already uses Firebase, then it's already registered and configured for Firebase.

    • If you don't have a Unity project, you can download a sample app.

  • Add the Firebase Unity SDK (specifically, FirebaseRemoteConfig.unitypackage) to your Unity project.

Note that adding Firebase to your Unity project involves tasks both in the Firebase console and in your open Unity project (for example, you download Firebase config files from the console, then move them into your Unity project).

Set in-app default parameter values

You can set default parameter values in the Remote Config object, to be used if no other values have been retrieved from the backend. This allows your app to behave as intended before it connects to the Remote Config backend.

To do this, create a string dictionary, and populate it with key/value pairs representing the defaults you want to add. (Non-string properties will be converted to the property's type when SetDefaults is called.)

System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, object> defaults =
  new System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, object>();

// These are the values that are used if we haven't fetched data from the
// server
// yet, or if we ask for values that the server doesn't have:
defaults.Add("config_test_string", "default local string");
defaults.Add("config_test_int", 1);
defaults.Add("config_test_float", 1.0);
defaults.Add("config_test_bool", false);

Firebase.RemoteConfig.FirebaseRemoteConfig.SetDefaults(defaults);

Get parameter values to use in your app

Now you can get parameter values from the Remote Config object. If you set values in the Remote Config backend, fetched them, and then activated them, those values are available to your app. Otherwise, you get the in-app parameter values configured using SetDefaults().

To get these values, use GetValue(), providing the parameter key as an argument. This returns a ConfigValue, which has properties to convert the value into various base types.

Connect your app in the Firebase console

In the Firebase console, add your app to your Firebase project.

Set parameter values

  1. In the Firebase console, open your project.
  2. Select Remote Config from the menu to view the Remote Config dashboard.
  3. Define parameters with the same names as the parameters that you defined in your app. For each parameter, you can set a default value (which will eventually override the in-app default value) and conditional values. To learn more, see Remote Config parameters and conditions.

Fetch and activate values (as needed)

To fetch parameter values from the Remote Config backend, call the FetchAsync() method. Any values that you set on the backend are fetched and cached in the Remote Config object.

// Start a fetch request.
// FetchAsync only fetches new data if the current data is older than the provided
// timespan.  Otherwise it assumes the data is "recent enough", and does nothing.
// By default the timespan is 12 hours, and for production apps, this is a good
// number. For this example though, it's set to a timespan of zero, so that
// changes in the console will always show up immediately.
public Task FetchDataAsync() {
  DebugLog("Fetching data...");
  System.Threading.Tasks.Task fetchTask = Firebase.RemoteConfig.FirebaseRemoteConfig.FetchAsync(
      TimeSpan.Zero);
  return fetchTask.ContinueWithOnMainThread(FetchComplete);
}

Values fetched via FetchAsync() are cached locally when the fetch completes, but are not made available until ActivateFetched() is invoked. Since FetchAsync() executes asynchronously, this enables you to ensure that the new values are not applied mid-calculation, or at other times that might cause problems or strange behavior.

(Optional) Enable developer mode

To enable developer mode, which can be used to disable throttling during development, you can use the FirebaseRemoteConfig.Setting property, setting a new ConfigSettings with IsDeveloperMode set to true.

Next steps

If you haven't already, explore the Remote Config use cases, and take a look at some of the key concepts and advanced strategies documentation, including: