Firebase + swift retrieving user data - ios

Question

I just tried to retrieve data from firebase for my project. For example, display the facebook user name in UILabel. I store the facebook user data like this
then retrieve the data using :
let ref = Firebase(url:"https://<app-name>.firebaseio.com/users/facebook:10207213459687665/name")
ref.observeEventType(.Value, withBlock: { snapshot in
self.facebookUserName.text = snapshot.value as! String
})
It works perfectly but it is pretty stupid by retrieving user name in a specific path because that could be different facebook user login.
I'm thinking like check the user is logged in and display their name or checking the currentUser or any smarter way to do this?
I am not sure how to do that.

Answer 1

There are 100 different ways to do this; here's a couple
users
user_id_0
facebook_id: facebook:10207213459687665
name: Nicholas
user_id_1
facebook_id: facebook:12346578912345689
name: Frank
in the above, you would query for the facebook_id you want, which will return the node and all of the child nodes (name, address, etc). The user_id_x is a Firebase auto-generated node name (guaranteed to be distinct)
ref.queryOrderedByChild("facebook_id").queryEqualToValue("facebook:12346578912345689")
.observeSingleEventOfType(.ChildAdded, withBlock: { snapshot in
print(snapshot.value) //prints the facebook_id and Frank
})
Another option is to use your same data structure and observe that node to load the data. Keep in mind that the facebook id is the KEY of the node, not the value - .value is key:value pairs.
let ref = Firebase(url:"https://<app-name>.firebaseio.com/users")
let thisUser = ref.childByAppendingPath("facebook:12346578912345689")
ref.observeSingleEventOfType(.ChildAdded, withBlock: { snapshot in
//snapshot will contain all of the child nodes
let userName = snapshot.value.objectForKey("name")
self.facebookUserName.text = userName
})
If you just care about the users name, you could simplify your structure by using the facebook id as the key and the value would be the user name:
users
fb_10207213459687665: Nicholas
fb_12346578912345689: Frank
and retrieve with the above observe code except you would again use the .value property as in your initial question.
In this case the .value property is a string as it's the only value (there are no child nodes as in the structure you posted, which could cause issues as it could be a series a key:value pairs which would crash)
Queries add some overhead so the observe is more efficient.

Answer 2

I have found an answer in http://www.appcoda.com/firebase/
When we are trying to fetch the data from current user add this code below to store the uid(when creating user account)
NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().setValue(result ["uid"], forKey: "uid")
assign the variable:
var CURRENT_USER_REF: Firebase {
let userID = NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults().valueForKey("uid") as! String
let currentUser = Firebase(url: "\(BASE_REF)").childByAppendingPath("users").childByAppendingPath(userID)
return currentUser!
}
implement code for function:
<reference>.observeEventType(FEventType.Value, withBlock: { snapshot in
let currentUser = snapshot.value.objectForKey("username") as! String
<--your code-->
print("Username: \(currentUser)")
self.currentUsername = currentUser
}, withCancelBlock: { error in
print(error.description)
})
}
Then we could obsolete the ref in a direct path.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. To fix it, I created a variable that automatically references the user that's logged in:
class ViewController: UIViewController {
let UsersRef = Firebase(url:"https://<app-name>.firebaseio.com/users")
Then, under the #IBOutlet that you're trying to get the user data to show up in, write:
let LoggedInUser = UsersRef.childByAppendingPath("\(UsersRef.authData.uid)")
When you run the code, "UsersRef.authData.uid" is automatically replaced by the specific ID of the user currently logged in. This should create a direct path to the database info of the logged in user without having to manually enter the user's ID in the reference.

Answer 4

To retrieve data of a facebook user we can use the currentUser property of FirebaseAuth which returns a FIRUser which contains all the information about you user. After reading all the user data you can store it anywhere but for the sake of this example I have used UserDefaults.
import Firebase
func getUserInformation()
{
let user = Auth.auth().currentUser
if let user = user {
UserDefaults.standard.setValue(user.displayName!, forKey: "Username")
let uid = user.uid
UserDefaults.standard.set(uid, forKey: "user_ID")
let url = "http://graph.facebook.com/\(uid)/picture?type=square"
UserDefaults.standard.set(url, forKey: "ImageData")
}
}