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.
Related
From what i've been able to discern so far, Firebase/Firestore seem like the perfect platform to use for an app I am writing. However I can't quite connect all the dots when trying to design my backend. I am hoping that someone will be able to give answer a couple of basic questions about the use of FB/FS.
With my app, a user will be able to share a small piece of data with a select group of friends. ie if the data is to be a To-Do list, the user would create the list on his device (iphone only) and then invite a small group of friends (probably less than 10) to share that data. The friends would have read-only access by default, however, the user can assign any number of them to be "admins" which would allow them read/write permission. When any changes occur to the data, all "friends" who have access to the data will be notified (by some means - push notifications etc). They can manually sync or setup the app to automatically sync. It seems like FB/FS can be used for this right out of the box. However there are a couple of concepts that I can't get my head around.
The database I setup is accessible by ALL users of my app by default. It's not clear (at least to me) how I would set it up so when a user creates (in this case) a to-do list and invites 5 friends, only those 5 friends can access or even know about that data. This is main stumbling block in my development path.
Regarding invitations. I read in the FB/FS documentation that invitations and notifications are among the many features available. I'm not clear on how this will work if a) the recipient doesn't have my app installed and b) how the inviter would get feedback when the invitation was accepted or declined.
Any guidance that anyone is willing to share to help me get started will be a huge help and will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
You can create new privates collections inside the main collection, and set different rules for access.
Check at: Firebase Firestore get private fields
The question is fairly simple, but I've yet to find an answer to it. Is it possible to use Google+ API in an asp.net-mvc web app that requires multiple tiers of users?
For example, this app basically needs three sets of users and permissions associated with each: Admins, Members, Guests. Mind you, I've never handled user authentication of any type before, so I'm happy to hear suggestions for other frameworks if you think those would be better.
I think its going to be very hard for you to get three sets of user credentials in a single app.
For you to be able to authenticate as user one your going to need user one to authenticate your application then you will have access to that users data. If you need access to user twos data your going to have to have that user authenticate your application. If you need access to both users the same time its going to be very hard for you to get this access unless they are both using the same computer together.
While it is possible to get a refresh token for user one returned which you could store on your server some place and then use that to access user ones data when user two is on their machine. This becomes a gray area as you are responsible of holding user ones data private especially from user two.
as for your different leaves of users thats just part of your system it should just be a matter of strong the users ids associated with their role within the system.
None of this has anything to do with doing this in .net. You could probably work it all out using the .net client library. Web applications (ASP.NET MVC)
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 want to allow one user on my app to chose who can see his own data, I don't know if I'm really clear so here is an example :
User A creates data on a table and he can only see his own data and/or decide to share it with another user.
User B can only see the data from another user that allowed him to do so.
I was thinking of some random token generated when the user is created and then the user can decide to share this token with someone else and then display the data based on this token?
It really depends on your "business rules" here. For instance, in an application I developed read rights were based on "privacy levels". Privacy level 0 meant that only you can view the data whereas privacy level 1 denoted that anybody could view the data. All of my queries were tailored to that datapoint, and a model relation to the user denoted the "owner."
So in your scheme, you propose a system where each record has it's own permission token, much like the system used in Google docs. This is a totally valid way of sharing records in a system. You could also get much more complex by allowing users to add users to the record, which might be another optimal solution for your use case.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on the subject. Let me know if that helps.
I would like to sync a core data app with a user with a different iCloud ID and I am trying to figure out the most graceful way to do this. I do not want the data to sync with all users, but want to be able to sync among family members for instance. From the research I have done, I do not think I can do that using iCloud Core Data sync because it only syncs between devices with the same iCloud ID. I have looked at this stackoverflow answer and read a little bit about Ensembles, Parcelkit and TICoreDataSync, Parse etc., but it is not clear to me if any of those options will allow me to sync with multiple users. Does anyone have a good method for syncing a Core Data app with multiple users?
Ensembles and TiCoreDataSync might work. They can use Dropbox file syncing, so in principle they should work with Dropbox shared folders. I don't think these are the main intended uses, so I suggest contacting the developers and/or doing some good testing yourself before assuming this would actually work.
You'll need to think about the user experience, though. At a minimum, your users would both need Dropbox accounts and would have to set up a shared folder before beginning to sync data this way.
Parcelkit probably won't work. It uses Dropbox's data store API which, unlike other Dropbox services, doesn't appear to support shared data.
Services that do support this kind of sharing exist-- for example, Parse and Firebase-- but make sure to review their pricing carefully before using them. Also of course, there have been any number of projects that have their own custom server back end, but that obviously requires having someone on the team who can do that kind of work.
You need to think about other device types (Android at least) if you want your application to be reaching more users.
I'm doing the same now by the following way:
Setup an online database with proper web services (careful with implementation for security matters - DB should NEVER be exposed by anything other than the web services).
Create a Class for your communication with the server (using Class methods with security handling like authentication and authorisation).
Use the class in your app to communicate with the server (SQL operations are done on the server).
To integrate with CoreData you need to create the model in your app similar to the structure in the backend database. Then you need to create a similar class for the app that deals with only local CoreData.
A higher level class might be required if you want to make sure that operations done on both server and local data storage.
Besides, you have to implement a lot of conditions to make sure that data written in local ONLY after making sure that it is stored online (or create an engine for differed operations to run later).
Another Way if you are familiar with notifications:
Use structured notifications between devices for data operations in order to keep everything in sync with other users. The problem with this is the "Autonomy" of the operations. If two operations were done in approximately the same time, you have to find a way to make sure the order of the operations is done properly (maybe timestamp or something).
I'm looking into the same thing for my app and I 'think' you can do a fairly unsecured version of what you are after using using the public folder in cloud kit as mentioned in this question (no accepted answer at time of posting) : Private data sharing using CloudKit
You would need to find a way to differentiate between data that is truly public and those shared among the users you need and some level of authentication.
I'm going to try exporting a permission file with access permission in it to whomever I want to share with combined with a unique identifier located in that permission file.
Keep in mind, as mentioned in the comments of the linked answer, my implementation will be security by obscurity (thanks for that phrase) unless you find a way of adding proper validation to it but my data is relatively insensitive.
Hope this, or any ridicule in the comments, points you in the right direction : )