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Using Supabase as an Alternative to Firebase in Flutter

Using Supabase as an Alternative to Firebase in Flutter

When it comes to choosing a remote database that offers real-time capabilities, authentication features, media storage services, serverless functions, and many more services, people usually go for Firebase. <!--more--> Firebase is offered to developers in terms of Software as a service (SAAS). Although Firebase is great, having a NoSQL database has some limitations to those developers from structured databases background. Supabase is a good choice if you want to use a remote database that is structured in nature.

In this tutorial, we will explore how we can use Supabase as our backend service.

Table of contents

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you need:

  • Android Studio or VsCode installed on your computer with the Flutter plugin installed.
  • Fundamentals of Dart programming language.
  • An understanding of how to create and run Flutter apps.

What is Supabase?

Supabase is an open-source alternative to Firebase (Backend as a service) that provides an instant RESTful API. In addition to that, it provides real-time capabilities via WebSockets with an SQL database where we can perform joins and write stored procedures.

Comparison between Supabase and Firebase

  • Database: Firebase uses a non-structured database (NoSQL) while Supabase uses Postgres database which is a structured database (SQL).
  • Compatibility: Supabase is Postgres, which makes it compatible with a large number of tools and frameworks. When it comes to Firebase, it is hard to export data and use it in another platform.
  • Pricing: Firebase has the Spark plan and the Blaze plan while Supabase has a Free Tier which grants you 10,000 Users and 500MB of storage space. There's also a $25 per month plan for 100,000 users, 8GB of space, and unlimited API calls. You can check out this site to know more about Supabase pricing.

Why Supabase?

If you have related data and want to make it real-time, Supabase is a good alternative for the following reasons:

  • It uses a PostgreSQL database with real-time capabilities - A very scalable relational database. You can manage your database from the Supabase interface.
  • Create tables and relationships e.t.c (Firebase does not offer this).
  • Write SQL Queries
  • Enable & disable extensions.
  • Real-time engine on top of Postgres.
  • PostREST API - Take your database (Tables and columns) and automatically generate a REST API from that with Filtering, Sorting e.t.c. You can access your data through that API in either your Flutter App, React App, etc.
  • Authentication with multiple methods/services - Create and manage users from Supabase:
    • Email/Password
    • Magic Link
    • Google
    • Github
    • Facebook
  • File storage.
  • Serverless functions (coming soon).

Before jumping into our code editor, we need to create a Supabase project.

Go to the official website for Supabase and sign in with your Github account.

Start Supabase

Once signed in, you will be taken to supabase.io, where you can create a new project.

Supabase project

Enter your project name and a strong database password and click Create new project.

Supabase new project

To create a new project, you need to have an organization, if you don't have one yet, you can create.

After creating the project, it will take two to three minutes to build the database and the API.

Once it's done, please take note of your anon key and the URL as we will need them in our app. The anon key is a public key that we can use in browsers while the URL is a RESTful endpoint for querying and managing the database.

Secrets

In this tutorial, we are going to create a Flutter App that implements authentication features i.e. registering and logging in users. Also, we'll use the Supabase database to store user profile data. For this reason, we need to create a table that will hold user's data.

To create the table, click on Table editor on the left-bar and at the center of the page, click Create a new table.

Table Editor

Enter all the column names for your table, in this case name, email, phone, and userId columns.

Table

userId will be stored once a new user is registered and is given a unique Id. This will help in retrieving the data of the logged-in user.

Let's get started with the app.

Step 1 - Creating a flutter project

Launch your Android Studio or VsCode and create an empty flutter project.

New project

Step 2 - Adding dependencies

Open your pubspec.yaml and add the following dependencies. GetIt is a service locator that we will use to access the SupabaseClient from the UI:

dependencies:
  supabase: ^0.2.13
  get_it: ^7.2.0

Step 3 - Designing the user interfaces

We will have three screens i.e. RegisterScreen, LoginScreen, and HomeScreen.

Since this tutorial isn't focusing on designing layouts, the screenshots below shows how the UIs should like. You can access the full source code here.

Registration screen:

Registration screen

Login screen:

Login screen

Home screen:

Home screen

Step 4 - Setting up Supabase client

In your main.dart file, initialize the Supabase client as shown below:

void main() {
  GetIt getIt = GetIt.instance;

  getIt.registerSingleton<SupabaseClient>(SupabaseClient(YOUR_SUPABASE_URL,YOUR_ANON_KEY));

  runApp(MyApp());
}

Here, we've created an instance of the GetIt package and used it to register our SupabaseClient object as a singleton.

Make sure you pass YOUR_SUPABASE_URL and the ANON_KEY that were generated when you created your Supabase project.

Step 5 - Registering a user

Inside the RegisterScreen, create a method called registerUser that will be responsible for user registration and saving the data to the database. This method will be invoked when the Register button is clicked:

void registerUser() async {
    final client = GetIt.instance<SupabaseClient>();
    final result = await client.auth.signUp(emailController.text, passwordController.text);

    if (result.data != null) {
      try {
        await client.from('users').insert({
          'name': usernameController.text,
          'email': emailController.text,
          'phone': phoneNumController.text,
          'userId': result.data!.user!.id
        }).execute();

        setState(() {});
      } catch (e) {
        throw Exception(e);
      }

      ScaffoldMessenger.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar(content: Text("Account Created Successfully"),));
      Navigator.push(context, MaterialPageRoute(builder: (context) => LoginScreen()));
    } else if (result.error != null) {
      ScaffoldMessenger.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar(
        content: Text(result.error!.message),
      ));
    }
}

Using the instance of the SupabaseClient, we call the method signUp from auth passing email and password in order to register the user. If the request is successful, we insert the user's data as shown below:

await client.from('users').insert({
          'name': usernameController.text,
          'email': emailController.text,
          'phone': phoneNumController.text,
          'userId': result.data!.user!.id
        }).execute();

Inside from() method, make sure you pass the exact name of the table that you created in the Supabase console.

Step 6 - Logging in a user

To authenticate users so that they can see the home screen, define a method called loginUser inside the LoginScreen. This method will be called when the Login button is clicked:

void loginUser() async {
    final client = GetIt.instance<SupabaseClient>();
    final result = await client.auth
        .signIn(email: emailController.text, password: passwordController.text);

    if (result.data != null) {
      ScaffoldMessenger.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar(
        content: Text("Login Successful"),
      ));
      Navigator.push(
          context, MaterialPageRoute(builder: (context) => HomeScreen()));
    } else if (result.error != null) {
      ScaffoldMessenger.of(context).showSnackBar(SnackBar(
        content: Text(result.error!.message),
      ));
    }
}

Using the instance of the SupabaseClient, we call the method signIn from auth passing email and password in order to login the user. If the request is successful, we navigate to the HomeScreen.

Step 7 - Reading user profile data

To get the data of the currently logged-in user, define a method called getUserProfile in the HomeScreen and invoke it inside your HomeScreenState as shown below:

void getUserProfile() async {
    final client = GetIt.instance<SupabaseClient>();
    final currentUserId = client.auth.currentUser!.id;
    final response = await client
        .from('users')
        .select()
        .eq('userId', currentUserId)
        .single()
        .execute();
    final error = response.error;
    if (error != null && response.status != 406) {
      //context.showErrorSnackBar(message: error.message);
    }
    final data = response.data;
    if (data != null) {
      setState(() {
        fullName = (data['name'] ?? '') as String;
        email = (data['email'] ?? '') as String;
        phoneNum = (data['phone'] ?? '') as String;
      });
    }
}

Using the SupabaseClient instance, we read the data from users table and use the eq() method to get the row that contains the userId of the currently logged in user. If the response has data, you can set it in your Text Widgets.

Step 8 - Logging out a user

To sign out the currently authenticated user, define a method called logout inside your HomeScreen that will be called when the Logout button is pressed:

void logout() async {
    final client = GetIt.instance<SupabaseClient>();
    await client.auth.signOut();
    Navigator.push(
        context, MaterialPageRoute(builder: (context) => LoginScreen()));
    Navigator.pop(context);
}

Using the SupabaseClient instance, we call the method signOut from auth in order to log out the user. You can then navigate the user to the LoginScreen.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have gone through what Supabase is and how it compares to Firebase. We have also gone ahead and looked at the reasons why you should use Supabase. Finally, we've implemented Supabase in a Flutter app with authentication and data storage.

Keep exploring more about Supabase as it is still in development and will have more features soon.

Reference

Happy coding!

Peer Review Contributions by: Eric Gacoki

Published on: Feb 22, 2022
Updated on: Jul 12, 2024
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