So I'm building out an app with Meteor and noticed when I log in with Twitter and then Facebook, I create two separate user accounts. Is there any built in way to make sure these are merged? I'm not seeing any email address in the twitter based user account, so I can see it might be difficult to figure out which accounts to link.
Suggestions? Thanks!
I've been in a similar situation so here's a good starting point for you:
You might want to do the merge at the Accounts.onCreateUser event. Basically, what you would do at this time is to:
Do a mandatory protocol / routine to save the email in some profile field in any authentication method as much as possible, so that you are able to do the next step, which is..
Whenever another authentication method is used (to create the user), you can compare the existing database of users (now confident that an email field would be present at all times to check against), and do the merge whenever an exact email match happens.
It's a shame I do not have the code now because I tried this protocol once, but I quickly decided that I'll just stick with one authentication method for some reason. Maybe I'll update this answer when I can get around to try and code that again.. or maybe not.
Related
I am building a job portal for the web using React, Redux and Firebase/Firestore. I've completed all the features I needed except one.
I want unregistered-users/job-seekers to be able to:
Bookmark job posts.
Keep the record of applied jobs.
Keep the record of search queries.
I am thinking about using IndexedDB for this feature. Particularly Dexie.js to make things easier. However, this data will be persisted in user's browser and user will have no access to it in another browser or device. Therefore, I want to give users an option to be able to save all the data to Firestore if user sign into the website and I need this to be automatic. So, as soon as user signs in, I will save it to the database.
I thought about using Anonymous Authentication instead of IndexedDB/Firestore, so all the data will be saved into the database and as soon as user signs in using credentials, the user can claim the ownership of the data. However, this is an extra step to use these features I listed above and not everyone is happy with authenticating an app even though nothing is required from the user. Besides, there will be so many ghost accounts.
So, as I mentioned in the title; I want to save everything to IndexedDB (I will take care of this), but how am I going to synchronize all the data in IndexedDB to Firestore as soon as user signs in?
I imagined the basic process will be like this:
User clicks "Bookmark Job Post"
App checks if users is authenticated or not.
If authenticated, save the bookmark to the Firestore.
If not authenticated, save the bookmark to the IndexedDB.
If User decided to sign in or sign up, check IndexedDB and synchronize it with Firestore and clear IndexedDB.
How can I achieve the 5th step technically? Is there any built in system in Firebase? Also, please feel free to share your idea if you can think of another way implementing this feature. Should I be using firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged() for the 5th step?
And lastly, how should I structure the Firestore to save bookmarked jobs, applied jobs and search history?
Should I create a bookmarkedJobs collection and have documents of jobPosts duplicated for each user, who bookmarked the job post? And every time a job post is updated by an employer, I will have a cloud function going through bookmarkedJobs collection, updating every instance of it?
Thank you
This may be of interest to you
https://dexie.org/docs/Syncable/Dexie.Syncable.js
Been looking into making my website fully static/pwa, and just using indexeddb, and some webservice for data handling/storage ..this seems like a interesting route to explore.
Is this a common/reasonable Use case?
An app allows a user to save favorites locally so that the user doesn't need to signup.
Then the user afterwards desires to share their favorites.
Therefore favorites data needs to be synced from local to remote. The usual local storage for flutter is sqflite, and firebase/store is the remote. However, this seems cumbersome, as sql to nosql conversion is necessary.
I thought that this would be a general issue for UX etc, but I can't find any discussion of this issue? Maybe forcing the user to create an account is the most general solution?
It's a common understanding that if you don't have user account then you can't have any user data associated with your name. You don't have to force the user to have an account or lock them out.
When they favourite something just show a dialog telling them "If you don't have an account your favourites are stored on the device only. If you want your favourites to be available everywhere please create an account" then show options for "Create account" or "No, Thanks"
Create account: Goes to account creation page
No, Thanks: Adds the device to the favourites list and lets the user continue to do what your app does.
There's no problem to solve here from what I'm seeing. If you don't have an account you don't get account functionality. If you track users without them entering anything it's also a little bit illegal and creepy so no need to push the limits on how you can track the same user.
Another way to think of it is to make signup so easy they don't mind and also guarantee that it's worth it. Won't be used for spam or information selling. Take what's app as an example, even though you need to mobile number to send the messages, it's just used as a unique identifier and has nothing to do with the device's number.
Ask for their phone number or email or just any email, you'll most likely get fake info.
And what does your analytics say? Are you getting requests from users saying they lost all their information on a different device? How many people are using your favourite functionality?
I may have come to the party a little late here but here's my 2 cents worth.
The Sql to NoSql conversion is not cumbersome. In fact, there is a reasonable use case for this. I have the same requirement for an app that I am about to build.
Anyway, to store data in RDMDB or NoSQLDB you will need a data model to ensure consistency in your app. If the user has been using the app offline, and they later choose to go online, you can allow them to create the Remote Account, then check if they have local favorites. If they do, you will HAVE to ask them if they'd like to import them into the remote storage. If they choose to do so, you will then have to read their favorites from the local storage and store them in a List<Model> then map() that back to the online storage.
NoSqlDB can accept the json type data, so your model should include the conversion fromMap() and toJson() for this purpose (and others).
When I have come around to doing this, I will share my code (if I remember to come back here).
Is there a way to know if a newly created user was done so using the client or admin SDK?
No, the auth trigger isn't origin specific. It doesn't care how a new user account gets created... it doesn't get called/triggered until the creation occurs.
Not to go too far off topic from your question, or turn this into a fully-fledged conversation, but what are you trying to accomplish that you want to detect what created the account? I feel like there's probably a different way to handle the scenario you're facing.
I'm trying to write a function that will check to see if an email is registered with my Firebase app (with Javascript/Web), before proceeding with the sign up process (if the email isn't registered).
I created a node named active_emails which I wanted to populate with registered emails (like an array). I was going to check the email against this list and if it didn't exist then I would allow the user to proceed with the registration process.
I see from the answer here: Proper way to store values array-like in Firebase that Firebase creates keys inside the array. So a normal Javascript array check won't work. I understand how the answer above works, but I was wondering, since I'm essentially doing a look up on the emails of registered Firebase users, is there another way to do this check?
Am I correct in thinking that the answer above requires Firebase to compile and then send an array of emails back to the user client-side? This seems like it might affect performance (if there are hundreds of thousands, or millions of emails on file), and would it expose all user emails to the client? Is there another way to check if a user is registered or not, maybe something like attempting a registration and then catching a duplicate email error (although this sounds like a messy way to go about this).
The top answer here: How to find out if an email is already registered with Firebase Simple Login? suggests using fetchProvidersForEmail as a way of checking to see if an email is registered, but that answer is for android and I don't know if it's possible to do such a thing with Javascript/Web.
I've tried to integrate this method here:
function checkEmail(){
firebase.database().ref().fetchProvidersForEmail("emailaddress#gmail.com").once("value", function(snapshot) {
console.log(snapshot);
});
}
But it shows the error: firebase.database(...).ref(...).fetchProvidersForEmail is not a function. Does anybody have any ideas on the best way to go about achieving this check?
Thank you in advance!
This method is for auth only:
firebase.auth().fetchProvidersForEmail("emailaddress#gmail.com")
This is deprecated.
firebase.auth().fetchProvidersForEmail("emailaddress#gmail.com")
Use this.
firebase.auth().fetchSignInMethodsForEmail(email)
This question is not related to ASP.NET specifically, but more web applications in general.
I am building a web application wherein I am registering a user. As of now I am taking in very basic credentials like First Name, Last Name, etc of the user. In this website I am giving some information for free for any user who has just registered so that the user finds my website authentic and that it is not a fake website. After that, to get more information, the user has to pay.
The information my site provides will get obsolete after sometime. So, when a new user registers, he/she will get the new information that gets updated; but the old users have to pay to get the same new information.
My problem here is once the information gets obsolete the same person can re-register with a different set of credentials and get the new information. I want to avoid this from happening.
So my question here is this: what information should I request from the user, or extract from the user, to check that the same user is not re-registering? Or any other way to make this possible.
I am thinking of getting the IP address of the machine from which the person is registering and use it to check. But the user can use a different machine to re-register.
I am completely lost here and not getting the solution. I even checked on the Internet but could not find an answer.
Please let me know if you need any further information from my side.
You will not find a technical way to prevent users from registering multiple times. They can simply use another device, IP, another email account and different credentials.
What you can do is asking them to send you hard to fake "offline" information, like a credit card number or a photo of the ID. Some users may still be able to register multiple times this way, but probably not indefinitly. You will however lose many possible clients this way who are unwilling to provide such information for a test account, so this is likely not the solution you want.
My advice would be one of the following two:
Limit the information/service you give out to free users, so that even if they register again they will gain something when they pay.
Try to bind them to their account in a way where they would lose something if they threw it away. This may for example be providing user rewards for activity (real or virtual) or increasing their experience based on their history. Take SO for example: If you registered again, you would lose all your reputation. The users will think twice if this is worth the new content.
After reading all of the above, i think a good solution could be to let the user identify himself through facebook or linkedin. Few people will have a second account.
I think you cannot put any users like that because every thing can be duplicate
There are some ways for which the user must have payment mode or identity details like passport or it is windows application you can have finger scanner it will be definitely Unique..
You can do this (with limitations) with the use of cookies. Setting a cookie on the users device will allow you to determine who the visitor is and that they have already registered.
The limitations are that cookies can be deleted or blocked and are only valid for that specific user agent - the user could use a different device or a different browser on the same device. A lot of people don't really know about cookies though and how to delete them.
By tying this technique with a requirement to provide a valid email address you can make it a hassle for somebody to register more than once as they will have to create a new email account and then delete their cookies.
Whether this will stop enough people depends on your site and your requirements - if you're giving money away then this technique is not nearly good enough. If you just want to discourage the practice of multiple accounts it may be enough.
Your only way out is to have SOMETHING the existing user gets as a "gift?" or added value to maintain just one account. If you can identify items of value to your subscribers and offer to "give" it to them provided their account "attains" one or more status, then you'll get some control. Take stackoverflow.com for example, I don't need a second account.
Identifying by facebook or linkedin is a good option, but if you are giving such services. which are very beneficial for the users, so they dont mind on creating multiple accounts on even facebook or linked in.
So what i think is to set some reward type stuff with each user, and increase the services as they get increment in rewards.once they are good in rewards and are capable to use multiple services, this increases the probability that they will not create another account.