I'm importing users from a MySQL database that used a sequential numeric ID for the user ID.
When importing into Firebase using the admin.auth().importUsers() method, I would prefer to provide a new user ID that closely resembles a Firebase generated Auth UIDs.
I know Firebase doesn't share their method of generating Auth UIDs but is there a method and specs I could use to generate a UID that is similar in appearance, length, and won't cause any collisions?
My fallback is to create an empty user, grab the generated UID from the empty user, and then delete that empty user. I can then use that generated Auth UID on my imported user, but clearly, this is a bit more resource intensive.
Related
I am trying to make a db model on fire base but I didn't understand the user authentication quite yet in mongo db you can make a document that has all the user data like email for example and passwords in addition to that user data, but in firebase the user authentication is a separate data base , can i make users document that include users data and authentication with in the fire cloud db ? or at least can I connect AUTH and db together ?
Firebase Authentication handles everything from hashing passwords to storing credentials and you don't have to store anything in a database. It also generates a unique UID for each user that can be used to identify user specific data in a database.
For example, if you have a collection "posts" then you can store the author's UID along with post data.
Also check: Firestore data modeling with more than one collection for each user
Is it possible to change those random UIDs strings in firebase to an integer?
I am using firebase tokens to authenticate on my back-end. In my back-end I also have a table which stores additional user data required for my application. This table has a user id column which is an integer primary key and also an additional firebase_id field to know which firebase uid corresponds to this user. Each time there is an authenticated request on my backend, the firebase token is sent and my backend uses the uid field to look up firebase_id == uid to get the matching user in my backend or create if it does not exist. I would like to get rid of firebase_id and make uid be an integer so that instead of querying firebase_id I can query the integer primary key of the users table.
Is this possible?
Or are there any alternatives?
I want to do this for performance reasons, if that matters.
The UID of a user is determined by the authentication provider that creates that user. None of the built-in providers allow you to control the UID that is created, so you're out of luck there.
What you can do is create your own authentication provider and use that with Firebase. The UID is then under your control.
I signed up a user in my Flutter app using FirebaseAuth.instance.verifyPhoneNumber(). This works perfectly and the user shows up in my Firebase Console.
FirebaseAuth.instance.currentUser() now returns the user for me whenever I open the app. Should I store user info (age, weight etc.) here, or should I create a users collection in my Database and link the currentUser().uid in there?
Also, should I store it on the Database linked against the uid, or linked against the login info. For example, link a user to the phoneNumber and not the uid. Because if you ever delete the user, but they want to register again, then they will get a new uid, but their phoneNumber / email will still stay the same and can therefore still link to their old data.
You can't add arbitrary data to the Firebase Authentication user profile. So you should store the additional data in a database, and indeed associate it with the UID of the user, so that you can easily look it up. This also allows you to implement searches for users more easily, as the client-side Firebase Authentication SDKs have no functionality to look up data for any user but the currently signed in one.
To the additional question: if a user deletes their account from your application, you should respect their wishes and delete the additional data that you store for them too.
I know UID is used because it is unique. But in my app, all of them are registered with Google ID, Google ID is also unique. Should I use UID?
yes it is better to use the uid.
From the docs:
You can let your users authenticate with Firebase using their Google Accounts by integrating Google Sign-In into your app.
So after you authenticate the users, the uid will be in the authentication page in firebase. That id will help you later in the firebase database also and it is easier to use and add in the database.
Can easily be gotten using this:
FirebaseUser user=FirebaseAuth.getInstance().getCurrentUser();
Then you can use the method getUid() to get the userid. So using it will make the work easier for you.
From the docs:
After a user signs in for the first time, a new user account is created and linked to the credentials—that is, the user name and password, phone number, or auth provider information—the user signed in with. This new account is stored as part of your Firebase project, and can be used to identify a user across every app in your project, regardless of how the user signs in.
Also check this link: https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/android/google-signin (Next Step section)
I'll suggest you use email ID instead of UID because if the user account is deleted from your Firebase Auth (either you delete it using Admin SDK, or perform a manual deletion on console), the next time user signs in with the same email ID will now give you a different UID and therefore all of your data in your database which rely on your UID won't be accessible.
However, you can't use use an email ID as it is, because Firebase key doesn't allow you to use . (dot) as keys, so just replace your . with a ,. You can find more information here.
TL;DR
Use email ID as it will always be unique unlike UID which gets generated every time a user signs in if that ID was previously deleted on Firebase Authentication server.
So, what I want to do is for users to upload their positions to Firebase under a known key (so that the uploader can update his position), but anonymously.
When I use .push(), I do get a "unique" key, but I can't get the reference to update the position later.
If I use an uid, users are going to have access to other user's uids and I'm afraid this could be a security breach. (I'm not sure if uids are very relevant security-wise).
What can I do to post anonymous positions and update these fields later?
Firebase Authentication UID strings are not intended to be secure or private. The only security is provided by security rules on the data you wish to protect. If one user knows another user's UID, they don't know the identity of the person on the other side, unless you manage to leak that data by failing to protected it correctly with security rules. So be sure to define what your access rules should be, and implement them accordingly.
If you want to use a push id for any reason, just be sure to store that unique string somewhere so you can use it later to construct a ref to the path where it was added.