CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosgoogle-cloud-sql
mef27
mef27

Reputation: 409

How do I connect an iOS app to Google Cloud SQL?

I had been building my database using Cloud Firestore because this was the easiest to implement. However, the querying capabilities of Firestore are insufficient for what I want to build, mostly due to the fact it can't handle querying inequalities on multiple fields. I need a SQL database.

I have an instance of Google Cloud SQL set up. The integration is far harder than Firebase where you just need to add a Cocoapods Pod. From my research it looks like I need to set up a Cloud SQL proxy, although if there is a simpler way of connecting it, I'd be glad to hear about it.

Essentially, I need a way for a client on the iOS to read and write to a SQL database. Cloud SQL seemed like the best, most scalable option (though I'd be open to hearing about alternatives that are easy to implement).

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1913

Answers (2)

Rafael Zasas
Rafael Zasas

Reputation: 993

I’ve found that querying with Firestore is best designed around your front end needs. Using nested sub collections, the ref property or document/collection id relationships can get you most of what you need for the front end.

You could also use Firebase Functions written in most of the major languages which perform stateless transactions to a Cloud SQL, Spanner or any other GCP database instance.

Alternatively you could deploy container images to Google Container Registry and easily deploy to Kubernetes Engine, Compute Engine or Cloud Run. Each of which have trade offs and advantages.

One advantage to using Firestore is to easily tie users with authentication {uid}; rules to protect the backend; custom claims for role based permissions on the front end and access to real-time streams as observables with extremely low latency.

Upvotes: 0

kurtisvg
kurtisvg

Reputation: 3565

You probably don't want to configure your application to rely on connecting directly to an SQL database. Firestore is a highly scalable database that can handle thousands of connections - MySQL and Postgres do not scale as cleanly.

Instead, you should consider constructing a simple front end service that can be used to query the database and return formatted results. There are a variety of benefits to structuring this way, including being able to further optimize or distribute your queries. Google AppEngine and Google Cloud Functions can both be used to stand up such a service quickly, and both provide easy connection options to Cloud SQL.

Upvotes: 2

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