[ Web Proxy ]
URL:
Viewing: https://firebase.flutter.dev/docs/database/admin/retrieve-data [Back]  [Original]

Get Started with Realtime Database  |  Firebase Realtime Database Skip to main content
Overview Fundamentals AI Build Run Reference Samples
Firebase [Firebase]
Send feedback

Get Started with Realtime Database Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

Prerequisites

  1. Install firebase_core and add the initialization code to your app if you haven't already.
  2. Add your app to your Firebase project in the Firebase console.

Create a Database

  1. In the Firebase console, navigate to Databases & Storage > Realtime Database.

  2. Click Create database.

  3. Select a starting mode for your Firebase Security Rules:

    Test mode

    Good for getting started with the mobile and web client libraries, but allows anyone to read and overwrite your data. After testing, make sure to review the Understand Firebase Realtime Database Rules section.

    Note: If you create a database in Test mode and make no changes to the default world-readable and world-writeable security rules within a trial period, you will be alerted by email, then your database rules will deny all requests. Note the expiration date during the Firebase console setup flow.

    To get started, select testmode.

    Locked mode

    Denies all reads and writes from mobile and web clients. Your authenticated application servers can still access your database.

  4. Choose a region for the database. Depending on your choice of region, the database namespace will be of the form <databaseName>.firebaseio.com or <databaseName>.<region>.firebasedatabase.app. For more information, see select locations for your project.

  5. Click Done.

When you enable Realtime Database, it also enables the API in the Cloud API Manager.

Add Firebase Realtime Database to your app

  1. From the root of your Flutter project, run the following command to install the plugin:

    flutter pub add firebase_database
    
  2. Once complete, rebuild your Flutter application:

    flutter run
    

Configure database rules

The Realtime Database provides a declarative rules language that allows you to define how your data should be structured, how it should be indexed, and when your data can be read from and written to.

Note: By default, read and write access to your database is restricted so only authenticated users can read or write data. To get started without setting up Firebase Authentication, you can configure your rules for public access. This does make your database open to anyone, even people not using your app, so be sure to restrict your database again when you set up authentication.

Initialize the Firebase Realtime Database package

To start using the Realtime Database package within your project, import it at the top of your project files:

import 'package:firebase_database/firebase_database.dart';

To use the default Database instance, call the instance getter on FirebaseDatabase:

FirebaseDatabase database = FirebaseDatabase.instance;

If you'd like to use it with a secondary Firebase App, use the static instanceFor method:

FirebaseApp secondaryApp = Firebase.app('SecondaryApp');
FirebaseDatabase database = FirebaseDatabase.instanceFor(app: secondaryApp);

If you'd like to use a different RTDB instance on the same project, you can pass in a databaseUrl using the static instanceFor method:

final firebaseApp = Firebase.app();
final rtdb = FirebaseDatabase.instanceFor(app: firebaseApp, databaseURL: 'https://your-realtime-database-url.firebaseio.com/');

Next Steps

Send feedback

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2026-08-24 UTC.

Need to tell us more? [[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2026-08-24 UTC."],[],[]]

Web Proxy Viewer  |  New URL  |  Original Page