title: Android Firebase Chat Notifications
body: <p>I'm writing an app for Android that requires a chat section. I need to be able to do notifications for new chat messages as well as show live updates of number of new chats (in a toolbar). The way I've implemented the chat portion itself is almost identical to the one here: <a href="https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase-android/index.html?index=..%2F..%2Findex#0" rel="nofollow">https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase-android/index.html?index=..%2F..%2Findex#0</a> </p>
  
  <p>In broad strokes, the chat Activity connects to a child in the database and monitors it for updates. The updates come from chats being pushed to that child. My question is, could I use a service which does the same? Could I build a services that keeps a connection with Firebase and watches for updates in a certain child of the database so I can pull my updates and notifications from it?</p>