Firebase Authentication without email as username?

Question

Is it possible to use a string rather than email address as a username in Firebase?

I tried, but the createUser method requires it to be an email address. Is there anyway I can get around this restriction?

Answer 1

Given that Firebase Email+Password Authentication does not verify that the email address actually exists, you can just stuff any domain at the end of your string. As long as the result is a syntactically valid email address, it will work:

var name = 'puf'; // TODO: read this from the form where the user enters their username
var password = 'geheim';
var email = name + '@whateverdomain.com';
ref.createUser({ email: email, password: password}...

Note that the user won't have a way to receive password recovery emails with this approach.

Update there is an example of how to implement username+password sign-in in the functions-samples repo.