I'm new to iOS development also using Firebase. I want to know that if it's advisable to create sub collections under my users collection in my Firestore database so that each user once they have authenticated they will have access to their own data? Or shall i create new collections and reference the users ids once they authenticated with my login.
Reason i ask because there's multiple ways of using firebase but some ways aren't efficient and i want to know, what is recommended>
As was mentioned by #BurakAkkaş, #jnpdx and #Jay, Firestore is a NoSQL, document-oriented database. With that said, creating sub collections for a users collection in a Firestore DB so that each user has access to their own data once authenticated may be (and may not be) a better approach than creating new collections and reference the users IDs once they authenticated with your login.
Structuring Data and Cloud Firestore Data model can help to understand how to structure your DB.
If you want to use sub collections and ensure that users can't access other users data, please refer to the Authentication article.
Without understanding the entire use case, it's difficult to make an accurate suggestion; your Firebase Structure is dependent on what queries you want to run. There are only some cases where a users data is only a users data that's never shared. Nesting collections makes those queries difficult to craft and not easily scalable.
You can provide your query details and a proposed structure to get further community support.
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I'm working with some IoT projects and for handling all data I have used Blynk application but now I have created my own app but problem is that I want to add sensor data to firebase, but I have multiple users that's why I want to separate my data for every user, how can i do this, which Library is helpful for this? I have searched on Google for this, but everyone adding data in common database but how to separate the data for multiple users?
To separate data per user in your database, you will want to organize the database reference path to a location relevant to the user uid. if your app supports Auth, you can access this with the currentUser object which should have their uid as a property.
I'm working on an iOS app that connects with Firebase. I was wondering, if it's possible to have data that a user uploads only be accessible to him/her. The docs explained how to do this for Firebase storage, but I'm not sure how to create a similar effect for the database. Is it possible to do this, or will all data be public to all users?
Additionally, if it is possible to have the data only be accessible to the specific user, will the data still be visible to me in the database?
Thanks for your help.
What you are looking for is a concept called "security rules" with Firebase. Is it available with Realtime database and Firestore.
You can restrict access as you described and data remains available to you since you will be the administrator of the database.
As the header indicates, I am looking for the simplest way to sync user-generated data (Integers, Booleans, NSDates, etc) among a small number of individuals (at this point, I am just thinking of sharing data between two people). Within the app, users can populate an array with instances of a custom object and this data is used to populate a UITableview. Assuming all users in the select group have synced their devices they should all see the same data in the tableview.
My original idea was to write to a json file in a shared Dropbox or Google Drive folder. After looking around online, however, I found that this method is likely to lead to data corruption. Cloudkit only allows public or private (single account) syncing, nothing in between. I have seen some posts that recommend using Parse, but that service is now on its way out.
Does anyone know of a (preferably free) way to do this?
You have several options:
CloudKit databases - CloudKit's database system has the concept of a public database which does exactly what you want. It's fairly easy to use as well, and is "free" with an Apple developer account. The only downside is that it's for Apple devices only (AFAIK).
Firebase - Google's Firebase is basically identical to CloudKit in concept and features, but runs on multiple platforms. It is tied to the Google ecosystem, so your uses all need to provide a Google account to use it, but that's a small issue these days.
Realm - from a pure usability perspective, Realm is BY FAR the easiest data storage solution I've seen on iOS. However, it's sharing functionality is currently limited, CloudKit support is scheduled but currently all there is is this. If you only need local storage for now, then definitely keep this on your list.
No matter which engine you choose, users would be limited to certain views of the data through your own code. I would suggest that you save every record with a username of the creator, and then have another table containing read/write permissions, so for instance, the entry for "maurymarkowitz" has "bobsmith,ronsmith,jonsmith". You can retrieve these entries on login and then use them as the inputs to the query-by-example both systems use for getting records.
Thanks for all of the helpful responses. I ended up using cloudkit/coredata and it serves my purpose just fine. I simply used the public option and gave each set of users who are sharing data with each other a unique identifier, which is appended to any records they upload. When a user syncs their data with the cloud the application performs a query for only those records that contain the user's identifier. This way, multiple users can sync data among themselves even though they do not share an iCloud account.
I am looking for the proper way for a swift iOS app that relies on, in my case: AWS but has a local persistent data store so that every possible feature of the app can be used offline.
So far, I went from a pillar or two of Core Data to a full core data stack and it is becoming difficult to foresee how to coexist with AWS DynamoDB. While DynamoDB is of a NoSQL structure, Core Data in the way I have set it up is that of a SQLite persistent data store.
I need to eventually download tables and primarily use AWS for most situations where users are online, but if they want to work offline, I need to be prepared. Perhaps I should try to create a singular User entity, because why would I want to store other users offline? Then once internet is active, I could try to push it to my DynamoDB Users (plural) table.
I have created Entity's in Core Data such as Users, Authors, Profile.
In the scenario a user opens the app and has no internet access, I am planning on inserting a Users entity and my goal is to correctly populate Authors and Profile, because this offline end user is definitely a User, and I want to setup at least a Profile for them as well so that they can later tweak with customizations.
I have maybe too many relationships. I want to do this correct.
In simple situations, I understand a Person Entity might have a father, mother, child and how they can all fit nicely into Person, but since I have entities with enough unique attributes that I thought I need to create their own entities,
How should I go about creating an entity that certainly makes a User/Users record and establishes a Profile?
Short answer is this:
Core Data is your local cache whether you are offline or online. If you are online then the app should refresh the Core Data cache when appropriate.
When offline the app should not update the cache.
The User Interface in either case is identical. The user interface feeds from the Core Data cache ONLY.
I suggest watching my talk on MVC-N that is hosted by realm.io.
In the Simperium documentation/help section there is the following text:
All the data that is created seems like it must be tied to a user - is
that correct? Is it possible to have data that isn't tied to a user -
say a database of locations or beers?
Yes, though this isn't very clear yet. You can create a public user
(i.e., a public namespace) with an access token you share with other
users of your app so anyone can read/write to that namespace.
It's possible to limit this to read-only access as well if you need to
authoritatively publish data from a backend service.
Is there an actual example with this?
The scenario I have is as follows
My app will have a calendar
The primary user can add and remove data from the calendar
They will want to invite other users to add and remove data, my thought is that they can give them a token, the user can use their email address and this token to sign in
Am I on the right track?
You're definitely on the right track, but a little too far ahead on that track. The scenario you described is a great fit for Simperium, but sharing and collaboration features aren't yet released.
The help text you quoted is for authoritatively pushing content, for example from a custom backend to all users of your app. An example of this would be a news stream that updates on all clients as new content is added.
This is quite different than sharing calendar data among a group of users who have different access permissions, which is actually a better use of Simperium's strengths. We have a solution for this that we've tested internally, but we're using what we've learned to build a better version of it that will be more scalable for production use.
There's no timeline for this yet, but you'll see it announced on your dashboard at simperium.com.