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
