I am now developing a social application. But recently I noticed that Firebase is blocked in China. So I want to make sure whether firebase can be used in China?
* EDIT 24 January 2020 *
Some of the information here might be out of date.
Firebase has a China service at https://firebase.google.cn/ which is not blocked in the PRC. (Thanks to #c-an for bringing this up.)
That said, *.google.com and *.googleapis.com are still blocked in China. I'll change/update this as I get more information.
Original Answer
For now Firebase is blocked and can't be used in China, along with other Google services, because the PRC has blocked all URIs with *.google.com and *.googleapis.com.
This also means, for example, that the Play app store can't be accessed from China. If you don't know what's going on between Google and the PRC, here's a primer.
Also, according to Chinese law, user data of Chinese citizens must be stored inside of the PRC. You might be able to get away with only addressing this once you have a significant number of users, but the trend has been for the CCP to crack down more and more on foreign information, even busting VPNs and declaring them illegal despite complaints of academics who say that they need, you know, real information.
As we're now in the run-up to the 19th Party Congress this autumn, we can expect the situation to get worse before it gets better. Maybe 2018 will leave room for relaxation?
For now, very sadly, forget anything Google in China, and be prepared to store user data of PRC citizens on servers located inside the Great Firewall. Also be prepared for seemingly random degradations of your service within China, or to be blocked altogether, along with these other blocked services.
Update 2017-11-23: The 19th Party Congress has come and gone and, if anything, Google services look less likely than ever to become available in China. The great firewall is likely to continue to be strengthened as the Chinese Communist Party extends its role into corporations, and foreign firms are generally disadvantaged.
Update 2018-08-05: Google plans to open a censored version of its search in China, according to leaked documents. It seems reasonable to assume that if a censored Google Search becomes available in the PRC, then Firebase and other Google Cloud products may as well. The censored search plan, code-named Dragonfly, has reportedly been in the works since December 2017, possibly a result of meetings that month between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and an unnamed top Chinese official when they met at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, where PRC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping gave a speech.
Update 2018-12-23: It appears that Google's Project Dragonfly is now on hold if not outright abandoned. This implies that the outlook for Firebase in China has worsened.
You can build your own Rest API server outside of China, and make the server talks to Firebase rest api endpoints of Realtime db or Authentication, https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/rest/database. So you web app talks to your rest api server (accessible from China), and your rest api server talks to Firebase.
The answer is NO :
Using a huge part of Firebase services, I contacted the support, this is the answer :
I'm glad you are considering Firebase for your project. However, in
accordance with current U.S. policies, it is not possible to use
Firebase from within certain countries. For more information about
these restrictions, please refer to the U.S. Department of the
Treasury website. The current list is of blocked countries is listed
here. If you have end-users located within China, it's quite difficult
to access Firebase there since the use of Firebase requires Google
Play Services, which most of the devices in China don't have. We
understand that access to our products has been problematic from
within mainland China. We believe it may have been caused by
networking conditions in China, rather than Google's own services.
Since access to services is determined by the respective country's
government and they don't report to Google, the Transparency Report is
the most authoritative it can be.
I just tested and I am able to access my realtime database hosted on the Singapore region in China mainland. No need to modify anything. Whatever works overseas, works in China. Tested in Beijing.
Facing the same problem, if you are in china, install Astrill VPN and change from openweb to StealthVPN, connect to a server like USA for china one and login to firebase. It will work successfully.
Related
My app uses the South East Asian Microsoft Azure server and I think that might be the problem why people in the United States face issues regarding the app's efficiency. How do I get around this in Microsoft Azure? Do I need to purchase mirror servers, etc? I am very illiterate when it comes to server/hardware related stuff.
The SQL Database is also hosted in the South East Asian region
The Mobile backend is in the same region
The Blob Storage is in the same region
Could this be the reason why people in the other end of the world face 'slowing' issues?
Can someone point out how I can make sure that my app service is available worldwide instead of limiting it to a specific region?
I am trying to prototype a system that will display a list of choices to a user, and allow them to place an order for the one they select (an over simplification of the prototype, but sufficient to get to the point). I have the users credit card number, billing and shipping addresses, and other contact information, but I can't find any web services that will let me actually purchase something with this information to complete the prototype. I have checked directories such as Programmable Web and Xmethods, but they just seem to point to APIs that let you check for prices and availability, but not actually place an order. Does such a thing exist, or is there some reason (such as security) that I am missing, that prevents such a service from being offered?
The most important thing about online shopping is the security of transmitted information (e.g. credit card data). So the ideal case is to transmit these information directly to the related bank's (issuer of the credit card) payment services, rather than passing it via other service providers. This is what 3-D Secure does.
So when you use a common API this means putting an extra broker between, and passing the secure information to this party which increases vulnerability. Since such a broker cannot use 3-D secure (since it is not the merchant so not possible to make an agreement with the banks) and it should pass the information to online shopping site.
Moreover, an online shoping site can block traffic coming from such an intermediary webservice at any time if you do not make an obligatory agreement and making agreements for each online merchant is practically not very possible.
There is no such free API available the simple reason behind that information like credit card is very secure and confidential and there will security threat on free API's.
here is list of best 10 online payment system
http://sixrevisions.com/tools/online-payment-systems/
and this one who providing live demo
http://www.fastcharge.com/
I think it is possible though I don't know in depth information. I think this is what you see. In next steps you will be redirected to payment gateway of the bank and then you can complete the transactions just by answering some security questions. I think this is a service you should obtain from the bank. And I haven't seen any universal API that can perform the task you have mentioned.
Dialog GSM - Sri Lanka
Anything.lk - Sri Lanka
I have a .Net application that uses list of names/email addresses and finds there match on Facebook using the graph API. During testing, my list had 900 names...I was checking facebook matches for each name in in a loop...The process completed...After that when I opened my Facebook page...it gave me message that my account has been suspended due to suspicious activities?
What am I doing wrong here? Doesn't facebook allow to search large number requests to their server? And 900 doesn't seem to be a big number either..
per the platform policies: https://developers.facebook.com/policy/ this may be the a suspected breach of their "Principals" section.
See Policies I.5
If you exceed, or plan to exceed, any of the following thresholds
please contact us by creating confidential bug report with the
"threshold policy" tag as you may be subject to additional terms: (>5M
MAU) or (>100M API calls per day) or (>50M impressions per day).
Also IV.5
Facebook messaging (i.e., email sent to an #facebook.com address) is
designed for communication between users, and not a channel for
applications to communicate directly with users.
Then the biggie, V. Enforcement. No surprise, it's both automated and also monitored by humans. So maybe seeing 900+ requests coming from your app.
What I'd recommend doing:
Storing what you can client side (in a cache or data store) so you make fewer calls to the API.
Put logging on your API calls so you, the developer, can see exactly what is happening. You might be surprise at what you find there.
I'm looking for a United States Address Validation web service, as the title says. Also:
I don't need maps
I don't need Geo coding
I do need:
Validation that an address is real
Address parsing
Google's Maps / Bing Maps seemed good, but won't work for me because of these:
Prohibits use if not plotting points on a map image
Low request limits (100,000 / day) for premium account. I need more like 1,000,000 / day
Does Geocoding, which I don't need, which is resource intensive, which means it's slow
Any suggestions?
Maybe USPS?
https://www.usps.com/business/address-management-products.htm
use FedEx's API. They have an API to validate addresses.
Also:
https://webgis.usc.edu/Services/AddressValidation/Default.aspx
You can try Pitney Bowes “IdentifyAddress” Api available at - https://identify.pitneybowes.com/
The service analyses and compares the input addresses against the known address databases around the world to output a standardized detail. It corrects addresses, adds missing postal information and formats it using the format preferred by the applicable postal authority. I also uses additional address databases so it can provide enhanced detail, including address quality, type of address, transliteration (such as from Chinese Kanji to Latin characters) and whether an address is validated to the premise/house number, street, or city level of reference information.
You will find a lot of samples and sdk available on the site and i found it extremely easy to integrate.
You could, in theory, run desktop software and plug into any kind of API it provides, but then you become responsible for things like uptime, data updates, and associated overhead. You may also run into issues with the software threading model--is it multi-threaded or single-threaded software? You don't want to find that out in production.
There are a handful of web services out there that can verify US-based addresses, including the USPS official web service. The USPS one is very limited in the fields that it returns. For example, if you're looking for the "delivery point" which is used to make a full barcode, the USPS API doesn't return that information. I believe the USPS web service also limits the number of queries that you can perform, although I don't remember the exact limit.
A few things that you'll want to look for in a web service include the price (obviously) as well as geo-distribution of their servers. If a company has all of their servers in one location and that data center goes offline (which can and does happen), you're left out in the cold. If they have multiple physical locations, it can help to prevent unnecessary outages. Also, you'll want to make sure that the service call returns all necessary fields as per your requirements--like delivery point code, barcode, and DPV code (which tells you how deliverable an address is).
Lastly, you'll want to determine how you feel about interacting with the company. When you call them on the phone, are they responsive and concerned about your needs? Or are you talking to some front-line person that can't answer questions and is only able to gather information about your company size and revenue so they can evaluate how big of a fish you are and determine which salesman gets to call you back. Can you talk to the engineers that wrote the web service on the phone or via email?
There are a few choices out there and you'll have to choose the one that best fits your requirements and unique situation. Do a Google search to find a list of companies. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm the co-founder of SmartyStreets. We have an address verification web service API called LiveAddress. You're more than welcome to contact me directly with questions on my personal Twitter account or the company Twitter account.
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a mass-micro outsourcing API, where you can get lots's of small simple tasks (e.g."Is there a shop in this image") done relatively cheaply (e.g. 0.10 U$ per image).
Amazon seems to assume that this service is mostly of interest to US companies. This results in difficulties if you want to use the service (as an "Requester"): for example there is no easy way of funding your Account without an US Bank account.
Can somebody share experiences of using the Service from outside the US?
Since Amazon doesn't let outside US access yet, you'll need to either:
Wait for Amazon to open it up to outside US, might be a long wait.
Get a good friend in the US to open a PO Box for you then use an online US bank to create an account. If you don't start a corporation or other legal business, they will need to provide their US drivers license to Amazon too.
Use a 3rd party provider like HIT-Builder who will let you post on Mechanical Turk using their US Amazon account.
I think they recently changed their rules - I am based in Australia, and as recently as 6 months ago I was unable to use Mechanical Turk. That recently changed and now I am able to post jobs on the service.
You may want to take a look at TurkPrime labs which offers this as a service to non-US based researchers.
The problem you have is that to actually be able to add funds to your account, you need to have a US billing address. If you can get round that issue, then it all works fine.