AngularFire: Getting the ID of Users Data from email in SimpleLogin - angularjs

Question

I'm trying to implement some simple using registration using Firebase through AngularFire and Angular.js. I'm using the SimpleLogin tool to manage the users. I can create users just fine.
var firebaseRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_URL);
var simpleLogin = $firebaseSimpleLogin(firebaseRef);
var firebaseUsersRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_URL + 'users');
var firebaseUsers = $firebase(firebaseUsersRef);
var myObject = {
register: function(user) {
var myDate = new Date().getTime();
return simpleLogin.$createUser(
user.email, user.password)
.then(function(regUser) {
var userInfo = {
date: myDate,
md5: regUser.md5_hash,
firstname: user.firstname,
lastname: user.lastname,
email: user.email
}
firebaseUsers.$push(userInfo).then(function(ref) {
userInfo.uid = ref.name();
$rootScope.currentUser = userInfo;
});
}); //push user
}, //register
Works like a charm. In order to get at this information when the user logs in, I've tried implementing an event handler on the $rootscope. I would like it to search through the uid that I stored and then get me record with the right user information.
$rootScope.$on('$firebaseSimpleLogin:login', function (e, authUser) {
var query = $firebase(firebaseRef.startAt(authUser.uid).endAt(authUser.uid));
console.log(query);
$location.path('/meetings');
});
In order to use startAt and endAt, do I have to establish $priority. When I try, I get an error stating that I can't have any special characters. So that never works. I don't really care about how this data stored, I just want to get the index of the data so that I can retrieve the right user.

Answer 1

By using $push you tell Firebase to generate a key for you.
This is great for collections where you normally access all children at the same time. But that is not the case for your user info: you want to access the info for the current user.
So instead of using $push to add your user's info, I would use the uid of the user.
In the regular Firebase JavaScript API this can be accomplish with:
firebaseUsersRef.child(reguser.uid).set(userInfo);
The equivalent in AngularFire probably uses $set, but I don't think you have any need for that in your $createUser callback.
Update
It looks like you're trying to add your info to the existing user node that Firebase creates for you. This is the example from that from the Firebase documentation on storing user data:
myRef.child('users').child(user.uid).set({
displayName: user.displayName,
provider: user.provider,
provider_id: user.id
});
You can see that they do access the user's node using child(user.uid) similar to what I proposed.
Lessons
Two relatively small mistakes here as far as I can see:
when you use push/$push, you let Firebase generate the node name for you. In cases where there already is a globally unique ID (such as the uid of a user), you're often better off using that as the node name.
If you know the name of the node you want to retrieve, you don't need a query. You can simply access the node as ref.child(user.uid).

Answer 2

Thanks to Frank, I was able to figure out the right way to do this. In order to make my own users object searchable, I can use the uid from the simpleLogin object. So my register function works like this:
var firebaseRef = new Firebase(FIREBASE_URL);
var simpleLogin = $firebaseSimpleLogin(firebaseRef);
var myObject = {
register: function(user) {
var myDate = new Date().getTime();
return simpleLogin.$createUser(user.email, user.password)
.then(function(regUser) {
var userInfo = {
date: myDate,
md5: regUser.md5_hash,
firstname: user.firstname,
lastname: user.lastname,
email: user.email
}
firebaseUsers.$set(regUser.uid, userInfo);
}); //add user
}, //register
} //my Object
Using set instead of push, I can store the uid from the registered user into the object and then pass along what I want to add as the second parameter. My database will now have the users organized by uid, which can be accessed via a url.
Then, when users log in, Firebase will throw up a login event along with the authenticated user, which I can catch and use to add the current user to the $rootScope that's accessible throughout my application.
$rootScope.$on('$firebaseSimpleLogin:login', function (e, authUser) {
var ref = new Firebase(FIREBASE_URL + '/users/' + authUser.uid);
var user = $firebase(ref).$asObject();
user.$loaded().then(function() {
$rootScope.currentUser = user;
});
$location.path('/meetings');
});
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Frank.