How can I create a user with multiple attributes in Firebase with Swift?

Question

I am so new to Firebase (a couple of hours only) and still trying to absorb most of its concepts. I followed the documentation but still found no direct answer to my question. I have a registration form in my app...it takes username, name, mobile, etc. I used the firebase createUser function but that only creates a user with email and password.

How can I create a user with multiple attributes (name, mobile, username, etc)? Later on, I would like to query a username and get all associated attributes with them so to do that I need to have the attributes.

P.S. coming from Parse, this is not as straightforward.

Answer 1

Traditionally, you would create a /users node in Firebase that contains any other info you want to store about that user.

Use the uid (user_id) as the node name for each user.

users
  uid_0
   name: "Bill"
   food: "Pizza"
  uid_1
   name: "Ted"
   food: "Tacos"

This question has been asked before so please try searching for questions similar to yours before asking.

A bit more info here Firebase Users Node

Answer 2

I am assuming that since you will be having multiple users, you will have them authenticated before they access your app. You may first create a Struct file in Swift, as follows:

import Foundation
import Firebase

struct User {
let uid: String
let email: String
let usermobilenumber : String
let userFirstName: String
let userLastName : String

// Initialize from Firebase
init(authData: FAuthData) {
    uid = authData.uid
    email = authData.providerData["email"] as! String
    userhandle = authData.providerData["userhandle"] as! String
    userFirstName = authData.providerData["userFirstName"] as! String
    userLastName = authData.providerData["userLastName"] as! String
}

// Initialize from arbitrary data
init(uid: String, email: String, userLastName: String, userFirstName: String, usermobilenumber: String) {
    self.uid = uid
    self.email = email
    self.userLastName = userLastName
    self.userFirstName = userFirstName
    self.usermobilenumber = userhandle

}
}

Using textfields, perform the user input task. Then, you need to access the Firebase node where you want to write the data (which you may have previously saved as ref = Firebase(url: "my-awesome-app.firebaseio.com/userinfo"), and simply ref.updateChildValues().

My answer is a schematic response to help you get started, because Firebase documentation is quite exhaustive and has answers to most of the questions that a beginner encounters. You should read this website, and go through the API References to help you completely achieve what you want.