A manager needs to make the team's schedule live/public. The main challenge I'm running into is my firebase db security rules require users to be logged it in order to read data from it. They sort of look like this:
{
"rules": {
.read:true,
.write:true
}
"profiles":{
".read": true,
".write": true
},
"$clinicId":{
".write":"root.child($clinicId).child('permissions').child('admins').child(auth.uid).val() == true",
".read": "root.child($clinicId).child('permissions').child('members').child(auth.uid).val() == true"
}
}
}
What comes to my head is the following:
1- When the manger publishes the schedule, I would generate a token, add it to my permissions rules, and embed the token in the shared url as a param.
2- Then when an employee tries to access the url, I would use the token to sign in the user into the app.
I have explored claims and tokens in Firebase and I'm not quite sure which one would be the best neither this is a correct approach.
I would appreciate any insights.
Thank you in advance!
So it sounds like you want to make the data public, but harder to access.
Why don't you just include the id of the public doc in the url ? It is already a big-hard-to-guess hash. Which is all you'd be doing.
Additional security might include:
keep public docs separate from private ones, different collections
or use a flag on the doc that you can check the "visibility" of before returning to the client
Related
I'm beginner and I'm developing a chrome extension that shows data received from my firebase realtime database. It does not need Login, or any personal information.
I'm trying to use REST API. Until now I have been in a test mode so I opened access to data for all. But Google keeps mailing me that I have to change the access rule because it is dangerous.
My present access rule is this:
{
"rules": {
".read": true,
".write": false
}
}
Now, I fetch data from https://<project name>.firebaseio.com/<database name>.json. But if I change the rule, the access will be denied.
So I want to add some key to the url and change access rule according to it so that I can fetch data from the url. For example,
https://<project name>.firebaseio.com/<database name>.json?some_key=<some_key>.
I do not need personal keys so I want only one key just like when we get information from open APIs. For example, when I use weather api, I get my api key from the host and adds the key to url.
Is this possible? If it is, I wonder two things.
the key that I can use (for example, realtime base wep API key)
access rule of realtime database
You can't pass parameters to the Firebase database like this:
https://<project name>.firebaseio.com/<database name>.json?some_key=<some_key>
But if you change the order of the values, it suddenly becomes possible:
https://<project name>.firebaseio.com/<some_key>/<database name>.json
We then change the security rules to only allow access when somebody already knows the secret key:
{
"rules": {
".write": false,
"$some_key": {
".read": true
}
}
}
Now the secret key is part of the path of the data, and only a user that already knows the key can read the data for that key.
I'm creating a web application using the Firebase Cloud Firestore, and I would like to write the security rules I've imagined, but I can't find any better documentation on this subject, it's always simple things, like check if the user is signed in.
So what I want to do is to check if the article that the client wants to read has a property called public, set to true. And maybe I can check the source of the request, to be sure it comes from my website's url ? I would like to find a solution to allow read without needing the user to sign-in , but also with a minimum of security.
And is it possible to return true if the property is undefined ? I would like to set the article public by default, but i don't know how to do it.
As Frank said, you cannot restrict access to Firestore from a specific domain. However and because you use some api key to call your firebase resources, you can restrict the use of this key to specific domain. You can do this by going to the GCP credentials page --> the API key you want to restrict. From there you can retrict how this key is used to websites, apps ...etc.
For you other question about checking if artice has public property, that can be done easily by use of security rules like:
service cloud.firestore {
match /databases/{database}/documents {
match /articles/{articleId} {
// I chose visibility as a prop here but it can be anything
allow read: if resource.data.visibility == "public"
}
}
}
To set the article as public by default you can do that from your client app when you create the article document itself by setting a property let's say "visibility" to public. something like this in your app:
// Add a new document with a generated id.
db.collection("articles").add({
visibility: "public"
...
})
I'm not sure if you can whitelist only your domain, but you can do pretty much everything you need with security rules
So what I want to do is to check if the article that the client wants to read has a property called public, set to true
allow read: if resource.data.yourPropertyName == "public"
I would like to find a solution to allow read without needing the user to sign-in
allow read: if true;
Keep in mind that those are not supposed to be used as filters, they are supposed to control who can write/read stuff
I built a simple landing page with Angular and offer visitors who may be interested in the service to send their data through a standard sign-up form. The data are stored in a firebase database.
What would be the recommended approach to best protect my database knowing that:
my firebase url is public (currently stored in the javascript)
the page is public (so anyone can 'write' to the database)
So far I've added the following rules to my firebase console:
{
rules: {
".read": "auth != null", // nobody can read
visitors: {
".write": "!data.exists()", // nobody can modify existing data
"firstname": {".validate": "newData.isString() && newData.val().length < 40"}, // only string with less than 40 characters
"lastname": {".validate": "newData.isString() && newData.val().length < 40"}, // only string with less than 40 characters
"email": {}, // no rules
"message": {".validate": "newData.isString() && newData.val().length < 500"} // only string with less than 500 characters
}
}
}
Question 1: Are these rules good enough to protect my database or should I consider adding additional ones?
Question 2: Should I consider hiding my Firebase URL on a backend server? My idea would be to put the firebase url in a php file on the server; To update the database with new visitor data, the app would first make an ajax call to my server through the $http service, get the firebase url back, to then update the firebase database. In that case the firebase URL would not be public anymore.
What do you think? Many thanks
These rules validate the format of the data that can be written. They in no way limit who can write this data. Whether these validation rules are sufficient for your security requirements, only you can tell.
Some developers wrap the Firebase Database API with their own server. But most developers expose the database directly to the users of their app and then put their server-side logic behind the database, as described in this page and diagram:
Those developers typically end up with stricter security rules than you have now though.
i am new to firebase. i have set up a firebase realtime database and can read from and write to it if the read and write rules are set to true.
i have a problem with authentication.i have set up authentication for google and email plus password.
my goal is to allow any user to read the data but only one user (myself) can write data after logging in using a single email address and password.
i can successfully read from and write to the database if i login with google (with rules set to: auth != null.)
i can also read from and write to the database using the same rules (auth != null) if i log in with the email address and password.
i don't know how to set it up to only allow write access for the single user logging in with an email address and password.
i have tried including a user node in the rules but i can't get access when using the simulator (see below) and i don't know how to include the uid (which i can get after logging in) when building the reference - this is the reference i currently use (which works with the read and write rules set to true):
DatabaseReference databaseReference = mRootReference.child("Action_helper/1/Action_table_of_contents");
i have not included a users node in my database as i am assuming that is taken care of by firebase authentication.
here is the layout of my data:
i have tried the simulator using various rules options. testing access using these settings in simulator (choosing the Custom provider option):
Auth {"provider" : "firebase", "uid" : "Rp3OgoaABMN3hqTv0aF29ECQRCQ2"}
note: i get the provider and uid from Firebase object after logging in with an email address and password which i have set up in Firebase authentication:
FirebaseUser user = FirebaseAuth.getInstance().getCurrentUser();
if (user != null) {
// User is signed in
userId = user.getUid();
String provider = user.getProviderId();
i would appreciate some help in 1) formulating my rules, 2) if and how i should change my data structure, and finally 3) how to include the uid in the database reference which i'll use to write data to the database.
thanks
There is no users node so, defining in rules would not help. I think the rule that may work would be something like below (assuming 0 and 1 are uid):
{
"rules": {
"Action_helper":{
"$uid":{
//user-based security
".read": "auth != null && $uid === auth.uid",
".write": "auth != null",
}//$uid
}//Action_helper
}// rules
}
Examining above rules by default if we do not define rules then it is false i.e. at Action_helper it is false for both read and write. When it comes to the node uid (where $ denotes wild card) then, we check if the user id of logged in user is same to uid of this node and define rules accordingly.
I highly recommend to go
through the link The key to Firebase security - Google I/O 2016 , it is very helpful, easy to follow, and best explanation I found so far with demo example.
The data layout will depend on your requirement and screens. Although Firebase allows 32 level of nesting it is highly recommended to nest nodes as less as possible. And other important thing to think about the data layout is to keep data as denormalize as possible even if we
have to make copies of fields across the nodes.
To include uid in database reference you can keep on appending each child:
DatabaseReference databaseReference = mRootReference.child("Action_helper).child(uid).child("Action_table_of_contents");
So, here we are referring from root node to child "Action_helper" and going further down to it's child that matches uid and of that uid we are referencing to the child "Action_table_of_contents".
thanks for the help. i managed to get it working (partly) but am not sure that i am doing it correctly. here is my data structure (i have changed the names)- there is one user node (using the authentication uid), and two child nodes which contain the data:
and here are my rules:
essentially it works in the simulator but in code, i am able to log in and read and write. BUT i now have a problem, if i don't log in then the uid passed in the query reference is null, if i put a dummy value as the uid then i can't access the data at all (as the data is under users/the_valid_uid node and the dummy uid does not match the_valid_uid).
so how do i build a database reference without hard coding the valid user's uid? so that i can access the data in the Addiction_items and table_of_contents_items nodes (my aim is to allow anyone to read data in both nodes but to only allow one user (myself) to be able to write to both nodes after logging in with my email address and password?
thanks
How could you setup rules on Firebase which would allow a user to become a paid user of your app? For example, if I have the following data structure:
{
users: [
{
isPaid: false
},
{
isPaid: true
}
]
}
How could you setup firebase rules to not allow the user to update it themselves (by fudging a request), but still allow it to be updated automatically when they "pay" for your app?
I've thought about randomly generating a number and asking the user to enter that number or something like that, but I don't think that would work... Has anyone done something like this?
You'll need to have a server process that securely writes the paid flag using a Firebase secret (that can be found on Forge for your Firebase). Set the ".write" rule for /users/isPaid as false - the server code can bypass this rule since it knows the secret. You should call firebaseRef.auth(secret) from your server code first.