Building a Joke App with Cloud Firestore using Kotlin part 01

4 min readSep 19, 2020

Cloud Firestore is a flexible, scalable database for mobile, web, and server development from Firebase and Google Cloud Platform.

Note: I will not be covering the benefits, capabilities, and features of Cloud Firestore, if you want to know more kindly visit this link: https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

In this tutorials, you will learn how to build a simple joke android app with Cloud Firestore using Kotlin in Android Studio. Just follow the simple steps and you will be a Cloud Firestore Expert

NOTE: This is part one of this article covering the integration of Cloud in your Android project

Step 1: Connect to Firebase Firestore

Goto Tools -> click you will see the dropdown in the image below then click on “Firebase”.

It will open the image below, you will all the Firebase packages available in Android Studio but you only need Firestore for these tutorials. so click on “Firestore”.

It will open the below image, you have two important steps to follow
1: Connect your app to Firebase
2: Add Cloud Firestore to your app
NOTE: login your Gmail details in your Android Studio first before proceeding to the next step.
Click “Connect to Firebase”, it will open the firebase console in your browser

The below image is giving you two options
1: Create a new project
2: Continue with an existing project
In this part, you will select “Add project”

The image below will give you an option to change the name of the project, then click “Continue”

The image below just click “Continue”

Tick the checkboxes in this part

Just click “Continue”

It's creating your project

your project is fully set up and ready for use, click “Continue”

Firebase is setting up your project

Now your project has been created in Firebase, click “Continue”

Now your Android Studio project is connected to Firebase

at this stage the project doesn't support Cloud Firestore yet, you will need to configure it.
Click your newly created project (JokeFirestoreExample)

Then click “Cloud Firestore”

Now click “Create database”

Then select “Start in test mode”, the reason is that we are only testing it and not building for production.

Click “Enable”

Your Cloud Firestore project is creating

you now have your Cloud Firestore database all setup

Your project is ready to use the Cloud Firestore. you can see that your android studio project is connected, now click “ Add Cloud Firestore to your app”