Persist client dependent data on Facebook db? - database

I'm totally new to fb coding. For a new project, I would like to create a fb app. The app is multi tenant, authorisation and authentication is carried out by fb. That's easy.
However, I would like to persistent data the user enters within fb. For example, there's a user dependent attribute 'mood'. The user may enter any string. Now my question: any possibility to persist such info on fb db?

There is no way for you to control the behavior or store the data persistently on FB. Instead you can get the attribute and persist in your sever
You can subscribe to real time data, when ever user modifies any data, you can receive notifications and you can pull the data.

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How do I identify which user logged into my app via firebase auth?

This is an architectural design question.
I'm working on a React application that has a Spring boot (CRUD) backend, and I've recently added a Firebase Auth set-up for logging in and out. So far, users can log in/log out and then update a TODO list and save to a H2 database.
The issue is that I don't know how to relate user logins via firebase, to the DB updates. For example, a user logs in and updates the TODO list, when they hit save, I want to store their updated data in a DB table. I don't know how to relate the saved information to that user so that they get the correct TODO list information the next time they log in. I obviously want to avoid the situation where a user sees everyone else's data.
To do this should I store their UID from firebase? I want to avoid storing email addresses.
The application is a CRUD model. If there's a good way to implement what I currently have with firebase auth, then great. But if not, I'm willing to rip out the CRUD backend and use a firebase No/SQL DB instead.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
The idiomatic way to associate database information with a Firebase Authentication is indeed to store the UID of that user with the information.
If the write happens from you own backend code, ensure that the user can only associate data with their own UID by following this process:
Get the ID token from the user in the client-side application code.
Pass that ID token to your server-side code over a secure connection.
Decode and verify the ID token on the server.
Use the UID from the decoded token in the data, and ensure the user is authorized to perform the operation.
For more on this, see the Firebase documentation on verifying ID tokens.

Maintain user session in same browser in react

I am working on a web app that follows dual user-role type: Admin and Investors. I need to disable two users (be it admin type or investor type) to log in simultaneously on a website, which is opened within the same browser but different tabs.
Irrespective of their role type, at a time, either user A(admin) or user B (Investor) can log in. I am using localStorage for this purpose, storing two different key names for admin and investor.
I am new to handling sessions this way. Also, my code is quite big and nested, so I am unable to paste the snippet out of it here.
Any help even regarding how I can follow this approach, will be appreciable.
There are different approaches for handling sessions in client side of your web app, such as cookies and local storage.
In your case I think you should store your app user type and session ID in local storage like this:
s_id: admin_54759eb3c090d83494e2d80494e2d80
So before login app will check for s_id availability in local storage or not. Then in your app login flow you can decide to logout previous user and replace new session ID or just prevent from new login.
But I'd rather to use cookies. One benefit could be setting expiration time for session. For more info check out here.

What is the best approach to work with data while using token based authentication

I am building an sample application that lets user store comments.
I've created the registration and login process. When the user registers, his details are stored in a MySQL database and a token is returned to the browser. Now he can access the Profile page.
When an existing user logs in he is redirected to the profile page. The profile page is accessible only when a user registers or logs in.
After logging in, I want to show all his comments if he has already added them.
My frontend is in Angular and backend use Laravel. For authentication I use Satellizer.
I want to know, what is the best approach while playing with data, considering the fact that the user will add, edit his comments. Should I use localstorage and store data in a key value pair or should I create a json file which gets updated everytime the user adds a comment or makes a change.
I wanted to know what is the most efficient way to deal with data from server so that the application is fast even when it scales to a 10000 users and lot of data for each user.
Thanks
You should be updating it on the server when changes are made rather than only relying on localstorage. You can use localstorage to cache, but it should only be for immutable data, it shouldn't really be used for data that is going to change.
So in this case you'll be adding and updating new comments via your API (ideally a RESTful one!). Once you've made a change, you could store the comments locally and only update them when the user makes a new comment, however you'll quickly run into issues where the data is invalid on different clients. (i.e. if you update the comments on a different computer, the other computer won't be aware).
Alternatively, you could cache the comments and then simply ping the server to find out if new comments have been added. This could be using a HEAD request for example to check the last modified date on your comments resource.
You can store comments data locally on user browser, but you should properly manage it.
I don't how much load your server will have and if the time invested now worths it.
You can fetch comments and store them locally
User adds a comment, then you update locally and send a request to the server
You need to track the request response, if requests fail so notify user and remove comments from local.
if request was successful so you can continue on your way.
** facebook uses this "success first" approach
user does an action, and he see it happens instantly, in the background it could take few seconds, only if it fails they will notify you.
** look at their commenting process, when you comment, it appears instantly, no loading... but in the BG the load happens.

cakephp auth session regeneration

We are using Cakephp framework version 2.0.6
The site is "supposed" to allow an anonymous user to "add to cart."
We are using the session id (using cake's native session class) to store the anonymous user's information in a db table.
When the user goes to checkout, then we want to ask "are you a current member? If so, click yes to login or no to create an account."
ISSUE:
Regardless of what they choose, the user either then has to login, or create a new user/pass (and then login) which is causing cakephp to regenerate a session ID. This is making it impossible in the new session to grab what that user added to the cart when they were anonymous just 5 minutes prior. In other words, the anonymous user's session id changes between when they are anonymous and after they login/create-user, making it impossible to identify their cart post-login.
Is there a way to prevent cakephp from regenerating a session in this scenario, or a better way to accomplish what we are trying to do while still keeping our order flow (ie: anonymous being allow to add to cart, before login/create)?
It is this reason that shopping carts are more often than not stored in Cookies. That way you can easily retrieve the saved information post-authentication.
If you insist on using Sessions to store this data, consider setting your Security.level setting to 'low'. That should prevent CakePHP from regenerating the session ID.

Store intermediate form data

In a web application, we often come across a form submission process that spans across several pages, for ex: In first form we capture basic information, next page capture some other information and so on. I have a scenario where I've 7 screens to capture all the details about user and "Submit" button appears on 7th page.
Usually we store all the intermediate values in HttpSession and when its time to submit we retrieve all the values from Session and create an entry in database.
With this approach, by the time user completes all the form entries (i.e. from Page 1 to Page 7), everything resides in Session.
I would like to know, is there any alternative apart from HttpSession for storing the intermediate values?
I'm actually trying to find the ways to make my HttpSession less bulky.
You can also store just the reference in a session which then maps to a cache like e.g. Memcached. Or if it is important that you don't lose the data while the user walks through the steps, you can also persist the data in a database and just refer via a key from a session to it. To store too much data in the session is sometimes not the best choice, so I would just store a reference there.
You can try caching technology of .Net, this might be useful instead of using session for all the data, also you can just use the id of the session for the cache id.
Second option I think is configuring your Session-State mode to use SQLServer mode for the storage.

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