The Ionic Chat app

The application we are going to build in this chapter is named Ionic Chat. This app aims to get you familiar with a chat application that is built using AngularFire and Ionic, at the same time integrating Cordova plugins with Ionic using ngCordova.

We will first take a look at Firebase, then talk a bit about AngularFire, and finally see how we can integrate AngularFire with the Ionic Chat application. We will be using Firebase as our real-time data store to manage data in our application. Firebase will take care of syncing data in real-time. We will also be using a combination of the oAuth Cordova plugin and Firebase Auth to manage user authentication in our app.

Once the user is logged in, he/she will see all the users online in the first of the three tabs on our home page. The second tab will consist of the chat history, a list of users the current user has engaged in conversation with. And finally, the third tab will consist of settings and logout.

When the user clicks...