How does authentication work with Firebase?

In the previous chapter, you learned how to use the Firebase API to create a Firebase application instance and use it through your application. We were able to access the database, read it, and store data in it.

The way you work with the Firebase authentication API is very similar. You create a Firebase instance, providing a config object to it, and you use the firebase.auth() method to access different methods related with the authentication. Check your Firebase console's Authentication tab:

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The Firebase SDK provides several ways for users to authenticate:

• Email and password based authentication: The classic way for authenticating users. Firebase provides a way to sign in users with email/password and log them in. It also provides methods to reset the user password.

• Federated entity provider authentication: The way of authenticating users with an external entity provider, such as Google, Facebook...