How to to add extra user information to Firebase

Question

I'm currently building an iOS app that has its own database on Firebase to handle the app's basic functionality. However I want to add more information to each user (aside from the uid, email and password) so I can validate some steps in my app. What's the best way to achieve this, hierarchy-wise? I'm using the new Firebase btw.

Most Firebase developers end up with a /users/<uid> list in their Database. This allows you to store whatever information you want and it allows you to list the information across users (for which Authentication currently doesn't have an API). See for example this: stackoverflow.com/questions/36224004/… — Frank van Puffelen

Matt Hannam Matt Hannam · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-27T00:42:31

There really isn't a schema. You write the values into a heirarcy you want. First you reference the UID.

In Swift it would be:

var usersRef = ref.childByAppendingPath("users")

Then you would create an object with all values you want to write. You could also write the values directly without making an object first.

        let newUser = [
        "provider": authData.provider,
        "displayName": authData.providerData["displayName"] as? NSString as? String
    ]

Then write the values with:

        ref.childByAppendingPath("users")
       .childByAppendingPath(authData.uid).setValue(newUser)

The docs are tricky to follow. The reference for this example is https://www.firebase.com/docs/ios/guide/user-auth.html

This block of code will give you:

{
"users": {
"6d914336-d254-4fdb-8520-68b740e047e4": {
  "displayName": "alanisawesome",
  "provider": "password"
},
"002a448c-30c0-4b87-a16b-f70dfebe3386": {
  "displayName": "gracehop",
  "provider": "password"
  }
}
}

Hope this helps!

How to to add extra user information to Firebase

1 Answers