Recommendations for multi-user Ionic/CouchDB app

Question

I need add multi-user capability to my single-page mobile app developed with Ionic 1, PouchDB and CouchDB. After reading many docs I am getting confused on what would be the best choice.

About my app:

• it should be able to work offline, and then sync with the server when online (this why I am using PouchDB and CouchDB, working great so far)

• it should let the user create an account with a username and password, which would then be stored within the app so that he does not have to log in again whenever he launches the app. This account will make sure his data are then synced on the server in a secure place so that other users cannot access it.

• currently there is no need to have shared information between users

Based on what I have read I am considering the following:

• on the server, have one database per user, storing his own data
• on the server, have a master database, storing all the data of all users, plus the design docs. This makes it easy to change the design docs in a single place, and have them replicated on each user database (and then within the PouchDB database in the app). The synchronization of data, between the master and the user DBs, is done through a filter, so that only the docs belonging to one user (through some userId field) are replicated to this user's database only
• use another module/plugin (SuperLogin? nolanlawson/pouchdb-authentication?) to manage the users from the app (user creation, login, logout, password reset, email notification for password lost, ...)

My questions:

• do you think this architecture is appropriate, or do you have something better to recommend?

• which software would you recommend for the users management? SuperLogin looks great but needs to run on a separate HTTP server, making the architecture more complex. Does it automatically create a new database for each new user (I don't think so)? Nolanlawson/pouchdb-authentication is client-only, but does it fit well with Ionic 1? Isn't there a LOT of things to develop around it, that come out of the box with SuperLogin? Do you have any other module in mind?

Many thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

This is an appropriate approach. The local PouchDBs will provide the data on the client side even if a client went offline. And the combination with a central CouchDB server is a great to keep data synchronized between server and clients.

You want to store the users credentials, so you will have to save this data somehow on your client side, which could be done in a separate PouchDB.

If you keep all your user data in a local PouchDB database and have one CouchDB database per user on the server, you can even omit the filter you mentioned, because the synchronization will only happen between this two user databases.

I recommend SuperLogin. Yes, you have to install NodeJS and some extra libraries (namely morgan, express, http, body-parser and cors), and you will have to open your server to at least one new port to provide this service. But SuperLogin is really powerful to manage user accounts and user databases on a CouchDB server.

For example, if a user registers, you just make a call to SuperLogin via http://server_address:port/auth/register, query the user name, password etc. and SuperLogin not only adds this new user to the user database, it also creates automatically a new database only for this user. Each user can have multiple databases (private or shared) and SuperLogin manages the access rights to all these databases. Moreover, SuperLogin can also send confirmation emails or resend forgotten passwords (an access token, respectively).

Sure, you will have to configure a lot (but, hey, at least you have all these options), and maybe you even have to write some additional API for functionality not covered by SuperLogin. But in general, SuperLogin saves a lot of pain regarding the development of a custom user management.

But if you are unsure about the server configuration, maybe a service such as Couchbase, Firebase etc. is a better solution. These services have also some user management capabilities, and you have to bother less with server security.