I'm not sure if the method I'm currently using when I just want a Firebase auto-generated ID in my Swift app is correct. It feels a bit clunky, and I was hoping there was a better method.
These IDs are just for UUID consistency in my application and a few other use cases, so I don't want to perform a read/write operation in Firestore.
Please note, I'm not looking at any UUID generation method (e.g. UUID().uuidString) nor do I want to use a 3rd party lib which claims to use the same mechanism to generate UUIDs. I'm trying to specifically and explicitly generate the same IDs as Firebase, using Firebase, without incurring a read/write cost.
func generateId() -> String {
return Firestore.firestore().collection("unused").document().documentID
}
Ignoring the namespacing of calling Firestore.firestore() (only doing that because of where the code is called from), this feels very strange, to create a document ref to a collection that doesn't exist (and will never exist), just to extract the document ID from the document it creates.
I would have thought/hoped there was some sort of Firestore.generateId() static method or utility somewhere, and maybe there is which just isn't showing up on my auto-complete...
What you're doing now is your easiest option. There is no public API for generating those random document ID strings.
If you want to make your own function, you can simply copy what Firestore does, since the client libraries are open source.
Related
I have noticed that firestore iOS SDK (and possibly many other platforms too) don't have access to the createTime property of a document.
With node.js I can access the createTime property of the DocumentSnapshot (which is not mentioned in their official document for node.js either).
My question is, why firebase don't let us use this property (or silently let us use it) even if it is pretty useful for many cases and it is there already?
Also is there any way I could use this property for iOS? Right now I have to manually keep extra field associated with each document (which sounds dumb knowing that there is already a property that firestore keeps).
from the code comment:
/**
* The time the document was created. Not set for documents that don't
* exist.
*/
readonly createTime?: Timestamp;
As with most details that are not exposed through public APIs, you should think of that hidden value as an implementation detail that could change in the future. If you depend on it or try to use it in any way, your app could break in the future. As for why it's hidden, only the designers of the system could know that for sure. But you can be sure that, if it's not exposed in the API, they did not intend for you to use it at all.
What you can do instead is simply create your own timestamp field and give it the value you want at the time the document is created. This is very common.
I just wanted to do a quick sanity check with StackOverflow to confirm my suspicion. I'm creating an app and was tempted to use FMDB in Swift to store some data.I am treating this data as public in the sense that I assume it can be tampered with (and thus untrusted). This is because, after all, unlike a web app, this app runs on a user's device and thus they can access the .sql file and alter the database.
If I wanted to store information like if a user purchased something, unlocked certain weapons, or other data that I do not want to be altered in any way, I should not use a local database on the user's device.
Would you say this is correct and safe to proceed under this assumption? If I was looking to use the database to persist something important that took place, what would be a good approach? encryption with the key in the app, or maybe a hash or something?
If you want to secure your database, FMDB includes hooks for SQLCipher, which you have to obtain separately. See the various FMDB Encryption Methods that you can use once you have SQLCipher included in your project.
I am taking development courses for ios and I was wondering if I wanted to create a translation app would i use a array list to do so? As example code is:-
var dictionary = [“talofa”: “hello’, “faafetai”: “thank you”]
print(dictionary[“talofa”])
it shows up in the logs as “hello” but there has to be an easier way to do translations otherwise I would be fitting a whole language in a array list?
I also read online that people have been using third party services like google to make a translation app but my language is not on google (Hawaiian) what do I do?
First of all, what you are using in your example, in swift/objc it is called a dictionary.
Secondly, for such a huge amount of data, I recommend you use some sort of persistent storage. You can use plain text to store the dictionary (like creating a .plist file), but being iOS I would recommend setting up coredata.
CoreData will allow you to store the information on the device, and access it through a data Model.
Here you can find an example on storing in a file.
Here you can find an example on storing in CoreData.
I personally recommend using coredata for such a large quantity of data. Plist files are more suitable for storing low information quantities (like saving some credentials, some settings, etc).
You need to use DB for this. You can update it from your server when user will have connection, so you don't need to re-submit your app when you will update your vocabulary.
You can use CoreData as #Alex Bartiş told you or you can try another one which becomes popular: Realm
I can't seem to locate a built in mechanism to store user settings. I was hoping that electron provided a standard method for storing user settings across all desktop platforms. If there isn't a precedent for this I can implement it myself, I just didn't want to jump to a custom solution immediately. Research online is pretty sparse in this area. Thanks!
Each platform has different default locations for different kinds of data. So, if you want to store data in default locations based on platform, check out app.getPath(name)
It retrieves a path to a special directory or file associated with name.
You can also use it to differentiate between data the user wants to save, and data your application saves that you don't want to clutter up users directories.
Or if you just want to store files reletive to a specific path you can use the
app.setPath(name,path)
I've faced this particular problem with my Electron app and this post inspired me to write an NPM module called electron-json-storage.
This module allows to easily write/read JSON to/from app.getPath('userData'):
const storage = require('electron-json-storage');
// Write
storage.set('foobar', { foo: 'bar' }).then(function() {
// Read
storage.get('foobar').then(function(object) {
console.log(object.foo);
// will print "bar"
});
});
Electron doesn't give you anything out of the box for this. However, Electron does give you a method for getting the idiomatic location of storing user data in a cross platform way via the app.getPath API.
I'd say the 3 most common ways to do this are:
localStorage (or any HTML5 storage API)
flat JSON file (this is what I do, and I use electron-store for it)
embedded database like IndexedDB, neDB, or sqlite
Which one you choose will depend on your app's needs. If you only need to access this data in the renderer process, then I'd just use localStorage. Most of the time it seems you need to access the data in both the main and renderer, so a JSON file makes sense. If you're dealing with lots of data or complex querying, then maybe a database makes sense. I wrote about this more in detail here.
How about LocalStorage? If you need to access these settings from the browser process, you probably need to write your own (or just use a node.js library that implements this)
The best way that I have found is to store it in a simple file as JSON. The problem is that if you store that JSON in the app dir, then when you update the app, it will get wiped out. So you want to put it in the default directory for user settings for the current operating system. LUCKILY!!!!! There is a library for node developers that will help you find the userdata directory. The module is called appdirectory, and I have used it several times. It is extremely easy to use.
See APPDIRECTORY HERE
One could store data in cookies; Electron has a mechanism for it (https://electronjs.org/docs/api/cookies) and the cookies can be retrieved in the browser (Angular: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngCookies/service/$cookies, React/Other: https://github.com/reactivestack/cookies)
I was able to get it working with Angularjs.
I've read the documentation and samples multiple times and can't find out how to do this.,
I'm trying to wire up DB4O to use my own custom Id field. based on the documentation you can define your own IDs but as far as I can tell they won't replace Db4o's internal IDs, As in it won't actually use those Ids to identify the objects.
Basically all the examples do are tell Db4o to generate some sort of unique id and index it, I don't see anywhere on how to tell it that this is the ID that you should use.
Is it possible to have our own IDs on our model replace the internal IDs used to keep track of the relationships?
we need to have our own Ids since our system relies heavily on REST.
There no direct support for this. You need to create your own mechanism.
Simplest way: Use Guid on .NET. Or use a UUID in Java. In Java: Add UUID-Support: configuration.common().add(new UuidSupport());
Use callback to create new id's. Doesn't not work in TCP client/server.
See also this page.
Side note: You build a REST app. How many request does it need to handle? db4o is internally inherently single threaded. It can only handle a very limited load.