I have a publicly accessible app. No sign in is required but I need a way to store user data in the database as an object associated with a unique key.
From what I understand, tokens would be a way to get a unique identifier from firebase(??)
I tried creating an anonymous user and getting a token like this:
let user = firebase.auth().signInAnonymously();
user.getIdToken(true);
I expected getIdToken to return a string but I get an object.
So...
1) Are tokens what I want to do this?
2) If so how can I get a new token as a string?
Use the following code as a global listener on ur page to check if the sign-in is successful:
firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged(function(user) {
if (user) {
// User is signed in.
var isAnonymous = user.isAnonymous;
var unique_id = user.uid;
} else {
// User is signed out.
// ...
}
});
This snippet has been taken from the Firebase Anonymous Auth link: Click Here to open link.
For some reason I was trying to set up a binding to sync my app with Firebase, which I just realized I don't need at all! (I just need to push the data at the end of the poll).
Of course as soon as removed that requirement it was as simple as:
firebase.database().ref().push().set(myData);
When using the push() method, Firebase automatically generates a unique key which is all I need...
Related
I have a firestore collection and every user has one document. The document name is equal to the user UID.
I write to these documents with a firebase function. So I pass the user UID to this firebase cloud function so the function can write to the database (this is just a very simple write so I won't show it here).
Here is the function call in my js file:
const saveAllTimeData = firebase.functions().httpsCallable('saveAllTimeData');
saveAllTimeData({ data: firebase.auth().currentUser.uid })
But I am not very sure if this is safe.
Can't just someone change the firebase.auth().currentUser.uid part before the execution? And f.e. put in another uid to change documents he shouldn't be able to change?
The user's UID is safe to share as a UID acts like a fingerprint to differentiate and identify a user from another. these do not in any way give permission or power over that user, it is simply a random set of characters that is unique.
With the Admin SDK, you are also able to create these UID's per design, allowing you to have a custom UID that may represent their username if so desired.
Since you are also using a httpsCallable cloud function, this includes a value called context, which uses the JWT token from the auth module. the JWT token is decodable to the user and should not be shared. however, the method httpsCallable secures it through the HTTPS tunnel making it secure from most hijacking.
in your function, you should notice the context variable
exports.addMessage = functions.https.onCall((data, context) => {
// ...
});
For onCall, context contains a property called auth of which contains the decoded JWT values
// Message text passed from the client.
const text = data.text;
// Authentication / user information is automatically added to the request.
const uid = context.auth.uid;
const name = context.auth.token.name || null;
const picture = context.auth.token.picture || null;
const email = context.auth.token.email || null;
references
https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/functions/providers_https_#oncall
https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/functions/providers_https_.callablecontext
https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/verify-id-tokens
I have a web application using html-js-css and a flask server.
My web app is a multi-pages app which apparently means that I have to Initialize firebase for each page in which i want to use it -.-
The problem is that every time I initialize firebase app, I lose the current user so while in my main page, after log-in, if I write:
const USER = firebase.auth().currentUser;
console.log(USER.uid);
I get my user ID, as soon as I move to another page and repeat the above code, I get the error:
TypeError: USER is null
Is there a way to either:
avoid Initializing the firebase-app at avery page
keep the CurrentUser (even storing it securely somewhere)
Thank you
Workaround:
I got this workaround working before Frank answer which is probably the best way to proceed. Instead I just stored the user id in an encrypted variable accessible to all pages.
Since the main.html page is always loaded, I store/removed the variable in a onAuthStateChanged listener there so as soon as the user is logged out, that variable is removed:
firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged(function(user) {
if (user) {
cached_uid = JSON.stringify(user.uid);
cached_uid = btoa(cached_uid);
localStorage.setItem('_uid',cached_uid);
} else {
localStorage.removeItem('_uid');
}
});
then on the other pages:
function loadUID(){
var uid = localStorage.getItem('_uid');
if (!uid) return false;
uid = atob(uid);
uid = JSON.parse(uid);
return uid
}
I followed this to find this solution:
How to send variables from one file to another in Javascript?
You will need to initialize the Firebase app on each page, but that is supposed to be a fairly cheap operation.
To pick up the user on the new page, Firebase runs a check against the server to ensure the user token is still valid. Since this code calls a server, its result likely isn't available yet when your firebase.auth().currentUser runs.
To solve this, run the code that requires a user in a so-called auth state change listener:
firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged(function(user) {
if (user) {
// User is signed in.
} else {
// No user is signed in.
}
});
Also see the Firebase documentation on getting the currently signed in user.
In Firebase I need to check if a Facebook user exists without creating the user. Initially the user is anonymous, and they try to login with Facebook. I want this to fail if the Facebook account is not already linked to a user in my system. It won't be linked to the current user because they are anonymous,
If I use Auth.signInAndRetrieveDataWithCredential I expected a "auth/user-not-found" error, but instead the user is simply created. Is this a bug or expected?
let credential = firebase.auth.FacebookAuthProvider.credential(
event.authResponse.accessToken)
firebase.auth().signInAndRetrieveDataWithCredential(credential).then( (userCredential) => {
let user = userCredential.user
app.debug("DEBUG: Existing user signed in:"+user.uid)
this.loginSuccess(user)
}).catch( (err) => {
app.error("ERROR re-signing in:"+err.code)
$("#login_status_msg").text(err)
})
If I use User.reauthenticateAndRetrieveDataWithCredential instead I get the error "auth/user-mismatch" which makes sense because user is currently anonymous. However, I was expecting "auth/user-not-found" may be thrown instead if the credential doesn't exist, but that doesn't happen.
I don't see a way to take my anonymous user, have them login with Facebook and then see if another user is already linked to that Facebook credential without creating the user if it doesn't exist.
If you're wondering why? My scenario is:
The system allows anonymous users
A user logs in, then converts to a logged in user by registering with Facebook.
App uninstall
App reinstall
User starts up the app and is initially anonymous.
They try and login with Facebook again. At this point I want to stop them from creating a user if they don't have one already. If they have a user ID already, the code works fine and changes their anonymous account ID to the original user ID which is good.
I found a solution! It wasn't too hard to implement, but it does seem hacky.
So we know that when using signInAndRetrieveDataWithCredential(cred) for facebook login, the account is created even if it does not exist yet. To solve this, we need to make sure that we handle the following three things:
Detect if the account is new
Delete the current account that was created by firebase
Throw an error to get out of the current flow and return to wherever you were before.
I just implemented and tested this solution, and it seems to work great:
// ... do your stuff to do fb login, get credential, etc:
const userInfo = await firebase.auth().signInAndRetrieveDataWithCredential(credential)
// userInfo includes a property to check if the account is new:
const isNewUser = _.get(userInfo, 'additionalUserInfo.isNewUser', true)
// FIRST, delete the account we just made.
// SECOND, throw an error (or otherwise escape the current context.
if (isNewUser) {
firebase.auth().currentUser.delete()
throw new Error('Couldn\'t find an existing account.')
}
// If the user already exists, just handle normal login
return userInfo.user
The reason I did this was to ensure that users had to go through the "create account flow" in my app. Your case would be really easy to implement as well, something like the following:
let credential = firebase.auth.FacebookAuthProvider.credential(event.authResponse.accessToken)
firebase.auth().signInAndRetrieveDataWithCredential(credential)
.then(userCredential => {
const isNewUser = userCredential.additionalUserInfo.isNewUser
if (isNewUser) {
firebase.auth().currentUser.delete()
// The following error will be handled in your catch statement
throw new Error("Couldn't find an existing account.")
}
// Otherwise, handle login normally:
const user = userCredential.user
app.debug("DEBUG: Existing user signed in:"+user.uid)
this.loginSuccess(user)
}).catch( (err) => {
app.error("ERROR re-signing in:"+err.code)
$("#login_status_msg").text(err)
})
You can use linkAndRetrieveDataWithCredential:
let credential = firebase.auth.FacebookAuthProvider.credential(
event.authResponse.accessToken);
anonymousUser.linkAndRetrieveDataWithCredential(credential).then( (userCredential) => {
// Firebase Auth only allows linking a credential if it is not
// already linked to another account.
// Now the anonymous account is upgraded to a permanent Facebook account.
}).catch( (err) => {
// Check for code: auth/credential-already-in-use
// When this error is returned, it means the credential is already
// used by another account.
})
You can use the method fetchSignInMethodsForEmail to check if an specific email is already associated to an specific provider or not. Doing this you will be able to check if one if the SighInMethods of the email associated to your user contains Facebook.com or not.
I show you below an example about how I manage this cases on my application. I'm using an RxJavaWrapper on my code, but you will understand the point of how to manage it:
RxFirebaseAuth.fetchSignInMethodsForEmail(authInstance, email)
.flatMap { providerResult ->
if (!providerResult.signInMethods!!.contains(credential.provider)) {
return#flatMap Maybe.error<AuthResult>(ProviderNotLinkedException(credential.provider))
} else {
return#flatMap RxFirebaseAuth.signInWithCredential(authInstance, credential)
}
}
.subscribe({ authResult ->
//Manage success
}, { error ->
//Manage error
})
First I check the providers associated to the email of the user(You can retrieve it from the provider)
If the list of SignInMethods contains my credential provider, I throw an error, if not, I call my signInWithCredential method to create the user.
Continue your workflow.
What I did to solve this problem without relying on the call to linkAndRetrieveDataWithCredential to fail and using the catch block to sign in the already existing user is to save the userID field that getCurrentAccessToken returns.
const { userID } = data;
this.props.setFacebookId(userID); // saves the userID on the server
I can later check if this userID already exists next time the user signs up with facebook.
I want ask something about firebase security. How to handle following situations?
User is creating account with createUserWithEmailAndPassword() function, then i save his username,email,created_at...to realtime db. But what if data are not saved correctly. His account is created and he is logged in automatically but data is not stored.
I have some registration logic... for example unique usernames... so before creating acc i check if this username exist in realtime db. But he still can call createUserWithEmailandPassword() from js console and account is created.
For situation one:
According to the firebase docs (https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/api/firebase/createuser.html), creating a user does not automatically authenticate them. An additional call to authWithPassword() is required first. In order to ensure that a user isn't authenticated without valid data, you could run a check to the server to make sure the data is saved correctly before authenticating.
Edit: Nevermind that; looks like firebase does auto-auth now - take a look at what I wrote below.
Now a concern with this approach would be if your app allowed people to authenticate with an OAuth provider like gmail, then there is no function for creating the user before authenticating them. What you may need to do is pull the user data from the firebase, determine if it's valid, and if its not valid show a popup or redirect that lets the user fix any invalid data.
For situation two:
If you wanted to make sure that in the case of them calling createUserWithEmailAndPassword() from the console a new user is not created, you could try something like this with promises;
var createUserWithEmailAndPassword = function(username, password) {
var promise = isNewUserValid(username, password);
promise.then(function() {
// Code for creating new user goes here
});
}
In this way, you never expose the actual code that makes a new user because it exists within an anonymous function.
I don't think that this could solve the problem entirely though because firebases API would let anyone create an account using something
var ref = new Firebase("https://<YOUR-FIREBASE-APP>.firebaseio.com");
ref.createUser({
email: "bobtony#firebase.com",
password: "correcthorsebatterystaple"
}
(Taken from https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/api/firebase/createuser.html)
If you wanted to make sure that server side you can't ever create a user with the same user name, you'd need to look into firebases's rules, specifically .validate
Using it, you could make sure that the username doesn't already exist in order to validate the operation of creating a username for an account.
Here's the firebase doc on rules: https://www.firebase.com/docs/security/quickstart.html
And this is another question on stack overflow that is quite similar to yours. Enforcing unique usernames with Firebase simplelogin Marein's answer is a good starting point for implementing the server side validation.
First save the user credentials in the realtime database before you create the user:
var rootRef = firebase.database().ref('child');
var newUser = {
[name]: username,
[email]: useremail,
[joined]: date
};
rootRef.update(newUser);
After adding the Usersinfo into the realtime database create a new user:
firebase.auth().createUserWithEmailAndPassword(useremail, userpassword).catch(function(error) {
// Handle Errors here.
var errorCode = error.code;
var errorMessage = error.message;
// ...
});
When an error occured while inserting the data in the realtime database, it will skip the createuser function.
This works fine for me, hope this helps!
I am building a webpage using AngularJS and Firebase. I want to use facebook login to connect information on the webpage with the user. Firebase has a version of simple login which I guess is supposed to simplify the login process.
My problem is that I want to access information about the logged in user in a lot of places on my webpage but I can't find a good way to do it.
This is how I started out:
var userInfo = null;
var ref = new Firebase('https://<yourfirebase>.firebaseIO.com/');
var auth = new FirebaseSimpleLogin(ref, function(error, user) {
if(error)
alert("You are not logged in");
else if(user)
{
//store userinfo in variable
userInfo = user;
}
else
//user logged out
});
//do something with userInfo
alert(userInfo.name);
My first thought was to run this at the top of my page and then use the info about the user. The problem is that the code using userInfo (as in e.g. the alert) will always run before the userInfo variable has been filled and userInfo will return undefined/null.
I then proceeded to always create a new firebasesimplelogin object when i want to retrieve user data. Which of course isn't very good. Especially since every created FirebaseSimpleLogin object will be called again whenever another is called or a user logs out, for example.
So my question is, how do I use FirebaseSimpleLogin to handle and use my user information in the best way?
I would have liked some function to getUserInfo() or check isLoggedIn() for example. How do you do this properly?
You can take a look at this example for thinkster. It's based on using simple login with userid/password. http://www.thinkster.io/angularjs/4DYrJRxTyT/7-creating-your-own-user-data-using-firebase.
You can create a function like getLoggedinUser that runs in $rootScope that will allow you to find the user throughout the application.
UPDATE:
Around the middle of October 2014, firebase made some big changes. This method might still work, but it's better to take advantage of the newer version of firebase, specifically getauth and onauth. These methods will allow you to do the same thing without running on the rootScope. https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/user-auth.html#section-login
Please make a constant to use it everywhere in your App like that
.constant('facebookUrl', 'https://rjrestaurantapp.firebaseio.com');
Then in the controller inject this constant "facebookUrl & "$state" as shown below...
.controller('loginCtrl', function($scope,facebookUrl,$state){
and then you only need to give name of the state where you want to redirect after facebook authentication..
var ref = new Firebase(facebookUrl);
$scope.fbLogin = function () {
ref.authWithOAuthPopup("facebook", function(error, authData) {
if (error) {
console.log("Login Failed!", error);
} else {
console.log("Authenticated successfully with payload:", authData);
$state.go('restaurant');
}
})
}})
You can see the information in authData object after successfull authentication using facebook ....
please read this doc carefully https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/login/facebook.html
The above is the example of simple login using firebase and for retrieving data for each logged in user, you have to store user information at the time of signin as you know that firebase makes every child with a unique ID .. then you only need to use the offline features of firebase that will find which user is offline and according to that remove the node with the same ID which one is offline, you can find examples in the MANAGING PRESENCE section of the below link ..
https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/offline-capabilities.html