Setting users' own key in Firebase

Question

The question is asked already here, but since AngularFire updates their API, the provided solution is not usable anymore.

What I am doing is to create new user's account with email/password, store that user in Firebase Authentication service, and store extra information in the database.

However, in the Authentication, user has their key as simplelogin:29, and in the Data, each user has their hashed key, as -JpwB9oUVkeT_XRdiX2V. I do need their keys to be the same.

Below is the code to create new user, registered with auth.$createUser and store extra information in the user model.

var ref = new Firebase('https://myapp.firebaseio.com/');
var auth = $firebaseAuth(ref);

auth.$createUser({
    email: user.email,
    password: user.password 
    }).then(function(regUser) {

    var ref = new Firebase('https://myapp.firebaseio.com/users/')
    var firebaseUser = $firebaseArray(ref);

    var userInfo = {
        key         : regUser.uid, // ex: simplelogin:29
        date        : Firebase.ServerValue.TIMESTAMP,
        firstname   : user.firstname,
        lastname    : user.lastname,
        email       : user.email,
    }; // user info

    firebaseUser.$add(userInfo);
});

It works, but not the way supposed to be, as a user's key in Authentication and Data are still different.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 22 '15 at 18:13

When you're storing user data, you typically want to key on uid. After all the uid is already unique and using is as the key ensures that you'll never end up with two nodes for the same uid.

When you call $add it generates a new so-called push ID for the object that you're storing. This is great when you have lists of data, but in this case your data structure is more map like: you map uid to the user info.

So the solution is to not call $add, but instead:

var ref = new Firebase('https://myapp.firebaseio.com/');
var auth = $firebaseAuth(ref);

auth.$createUser({
    email: user.email,
    password: user.password 
}).then(function(regUser) {

    var ref = new Firebase('https://myapp.firebaseio.com/users/')

    var userInfo = {
        key         : regUser.uid, // ex: simplelogin:29
        date        : Firebase.ServerValue.TIMESTAMP,
        firstname   : user.firstname,
        lastname    : user.lastname,
        email       : user.email,
    }; // user info

    ref.child(regUser.uid).set(userInfo);
});

Note that this just uses the regular Firebase JavaScript SDK, which will interact totally fine with any AngularFire listeners you may already have on the data.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '16 at 03:29

You can also try something like this:

var empsRef = ref.child("http://sample.com/employees");

empsRef.child('11111').set({
  lastname: "Lee",
  firstname: "Kang"
});

empsRef.child('22222').set({
  lastname: "Nut",
  firstname: "Dough"
});

The output should look like this:

"employees" : {
  "11111" : {
    "lastname" : "Lee",
    "firstname": "Kang"
  },
  "22222" : {
    "lastname" : "Nut",
    "firstname": "Dough"
  }
}

Setting users' own key in Firebase

2 Answers2

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