Firebase Remote Config Quickstart

The Firebase Remote Config Android quickstart app demonstrates using Remote Config to define user-facing text in an Android app.

Introduction

This is a simple example of using Remote Config to override in-app default values by defining service-side parameter values in the Firebase console. This example demonstrates a small subset of the capabilities of Firebase Remote Config. To learn more about how you can use Firebase Remote Config in your app, see Firebase Remote Config Introduction.

Getting started

Add Firebase to your Android Project.
Create a Remote Config project for the quickstart sample, defining the parameter values and parameter keys used by the sample.
Run the sample on an Android device or emulator.
Change one or more parameter values in the Firebase Console (the value of welcome_message, welcome_message_caps, or both).
Tap Fetch Remote Config in the app to fetch new parameter values and see the resulting change in the app.

Best practices

This section provides some additional information about how the quickstart example sets in-app default parameter values and fetches values from the Remote Config service

In-app default parameter values

In-app default values are set using an XML file in this example, but you can also set in-app default values inline using other setDefault methods of the FirebaseRemoteConfig class. Then, you can override only those values that you need to change from the Firebase console. This lets you use Remote Config for any default value that you might want to override in the future, without the need to set all of those values in the Firebase console.

Fetch values from the Remote Config service

When an app calls fetch, locally stored parameter values are used unless the minimum fetch interval is reached. The minimal fetch interval is determined by:

The parameter passed to fetch(long minFetchInterval).
The minimum fetch interval set in Remote Config settings.
The default minimum fetch interval, 12 hours.

Fetched values are immediately activated when retrieved using fetchAndActivate. fetchAndActivate returns true if the final set of key/value pairs now available to the application is different to the set before calling fetchAndActivate, false is returned otherwise. In the quickstart sample app, you call fetchAndActivate from the UI by tapping Fetch Remote Config.

To control when fetched values are activated and available to your app use fetch, the values are locally stored, but not immediately activated. To activate fetched values so that they take effect, call the activate method.

You can also create a Remote Config Setting to enable developer mode, but you must remove this setting before distributing your app. Fetching Remote Config data from the service is normally limited to a few requests per hour. By enabling developer mode, you can make many more requests per hour, so you can test your app with different Remote Config parameter values during development.

To learn more about fetching data from remote config, see the Remote Config Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) on fetching and activating parameter values.
To learn about parameters and conditions that you can use to change the behavior and appearance of your app for segments of your userbase, see Remote Config Parameters and Conditions.
To learn more about the Remote Config API, see Remote Config API Overview.

Result

Support

License

Copyright 2016 Google, Inc.

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.