Simple DB storage using Firebase - firebase

Question

I been trying to use Firebase to set up a simple DB to store usernames.
Right now am running a localhost page with a input field and a button to submit to Firebase.
My Firebase code is:
var myRootRef = new Firebase('https://myappname.firebaseio.com/');
var childRef = myRootRef.child('users');
Then inside my click event I do:
childRef.push(_user);
This works but I end up with the following structure on Firebase:
{
"users" : {
"-J1aJh8xQCgYU23m5qWc" : "sdfsd",
"-J1aJQ1g5dw25SCGTLlq" : "ad",
"-J1aJPZET6j7Kn8-nIZR" : "ad",
"-J1aJg_ZchLeEVdnJnTb" : "adam",
"-J1aJQrC2T5CfT0bNgeY" : "aaa",
"-J1aJQTguxhvrMqcI4uU" : "dddd"
}
}
When what I want is:
{
"users" : {
"user" : "sdfsd",
"user" : "ad",
"user" : "ad",
"user" : "adam",
"user" : "aaa",
"user" : "dddd"
}
}
Reading the Docs it looks like I need to use setPriority but passing a number overwrites my previous data... How does one go about setting up saving like I desire? Thank you.

Answer 1

If you want human friendly names, you'll need to manually generate them. One way to do this is to create a counter, for example, in /lastUser. Every time you want to create a new user, you'll increment this counter using transaction, and then create the user by using set instead of push.
var myRootRef = new Firebase('https://myappname.firebaseio.com/');
var childRef = myRootRef.child('users');
var counterRef = myRootRef.child('lastUser');
counterRef.transaction(function(current) {
return current + 1;
}, function(err, committed, snapshot) {
if (!err && committed) {
childRef.child("user" + snapshot.val()).set("userdata");
}
});
For a more full fledged example check out https://gist.github.com/anantn/4323981, you can use the same approach to generate human friendly userIDs as well.