Listen up, developers. Google knows you like its cloud platform, but all that arduous setup and coding... yikes. That's why Google is launching a new one-click solution to power apps with a ready-made cloud backend and application framework. It's called Mobile Backend Starter, which pretty well describes what it does.
Setting up a backend with the Mobile Backend Starter allows developers to take advantage of built-in support for super-secure Google Authentication and a reliable store of data, but that's just the start. Here is the full list of advantages Google cites hoping convince devs to go with its pre-packaged solution:
- Cloud data storage: Users change devices and increasingly use multiple devices. Store any amount of data per user in the cloud to be accessed from anywhere.
- Pub/Sub messaging: Send messages from one device, to any or all other devices. You can easily use 1:1 and 1:many messaging as well as broadcasting. This feature is useful for various applications including social apps, forums, chat, gaming, and group collaborations.
- Push notifications: Data updated on one device is automatically available on all devices with GCM for Android.
- Continuous queries: Create queries that run continuously on the server, automatically feeding updates to the client. These queries are powered by Prospective Search.
- Google authentication and authorization: Keep data isolated per user or shared among users.
- Free to get started, scales with your needs: You can start by handling hundreds of users for free, then grow to any scale.
The Google developers page has a quick run-through on how to integrate Mobile Backend Starter, but there are also more detailed docs and a sample app available. The complete source code is hosted at GitHub if you want to tinker a bit. There was also a talk at Google I/O that featured Mobile Backend Starter, so take a peek at the video below. Now get to work!