Getting Started with Firebase Crashlytics

1. Introduction

Firebase Crashlytics is a powerful real-time crash reporter that helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues that affect your app quality. This tutorial will guide you through the integration of Firebase Crashlytics into your HTML web app.

Goal of the Tutorial: Learn how to integrate Firebase Crashlytics into an HTML web app for tracking app crashes.

Learning Outcomes:
- Understanding Firebase Crashlytics and its applications.
- Installation of Firebase SDK.
- Initialization of Firebase Crashlytics.

Prerequisites:
- Basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and Firebase.
- A Firebase project.

2. Step-by-Step Guide

Firebase Crashlytics can be integrated into your HTML web app in a few steps:

Step 1 - Add Firebase to your web app
Firstly, you need to add Firebase to your web app. You can do so by adding the following script to your HTML file:

<!-- Firebase App (the core Firebase SDK) is always required and must be listed first -->
<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/firebasejs/8.2.1/firebase-app.js"></script>

<!-- Add Firebase products that you want to use -->
<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/firebasejs/8.2.1/firebase-analytics.js"></script>
<script src="https://www.gstatic.com/firebasejs/8.2.1/firebase-crashlytics.js"></script>

Step 2 - Initialize Firebase

Next, initialize Firebase in your app. Replace the placeholder values with your actual Firebase project's configuration values.

// Your web app's Firebase configuration
var firebaseConfig = {
  apiKey: "YOUR-API-KEY",
  authDomain: "YOUR-AUTH-DOMAIN",
  databaseURL: "YOUR-DATABASE-URL",
  projectId: "YOUR-PROJECT-ID",
  storageBucket: "YOUR-STORAGE-BUCKET",
  messagingSenderId: "YOUR-MESSAGING-SENDER-ID",
  appId: "YOUR-APP-ID",
  measurementId: "YOUR-MEASUREMENT-ID"
};

// Initialize Firebase
firebase.initializeApp(firebaseConfig);
firebase.analytics();

Step 3 - Initialize Crashlytics

Finally, initialize Crashlytics to start tracking crashes in your web app.

var crashlytics = firebase.crashlytics();

3. Code Examples

Example 1 - Logging a custom error message

try {
  // Your code here
} catch (error) {
  firebase.crashlytics().recordError(error);
}

In this example, we try to execute some code. If an error happens, we catch it and record it with Crashlytics.

Example 2 - Logging non-fatal issues

firebase.crashlytics().log("This is a non-fatal issue");

Here, we log a non-fatal issue that doesn't stop the app but might affect its performance or functionality.

4. Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to integrate Firebase Crashlytics into your HTML web app. We covered how to add Firebase to your app, initialize it, and finally initialize Crashlytics to start tracking crashes.

Next, you can dive deeper into Firebase Crashlytics and learn how to track more specific events, analyze crash reports, and improve your app stability.

Additional resources:
- Firebase Crashlytics Documentation

5. Practice Exercises

Exercise 1: Create a basic HTML web app and integrate Firebase Crashlytics.

Solution: Look at the step-by-step guide and use the code examples provided in this tutorial.

Exercise 2: Create a function that throws an error and log it with Crashlytics.

Solution:

function throwAndLogError() {
  try {
    // This will throw an error
    throw new Error('This is a test error');
  } catch (error) {
    firebase.crashlytics().recordError(error);
  }
}

In this function, we intentionally throw an error and catch it to log it with Crashlytics.

Exercise 3: Log a non-fatal issue with Crashlytics.

Solution:

firebase.crashlytics().log("This is a test non-fatal issue");

In this example, we log a test non-fatal issue with Crashlytics.