How to provide user login with a username and NOT an email?

Question

I'd like to use Firebase for my web app that is for people with dementia in a care home. They do not have email or social network accounts so will need a simple username / password sign up / sign in.

What is the easiest way to do this? From what I can see in the docs I'd have to use a custom auth flow but I do not have an existing auth server.

If I do need ot do this what is the easiest way to provide the token? In Azure there is Functions and AWS has Lambda but I see nothing here is Firebase

Answer 1

You are correct that username/password sign-in is not supported natively in Firebase Auth at this moment.

You can implement a custom provider as shown in this example. This allows you to meet any custom requirements, but is admittedly a bit more involved than using the built-in providers. There is an example of this here that you can use as a starting point.

A workaround you could take without needing to use custom auth with another backend is to accept usernames in your UI, but on the underlying logic, append "@yourowndomain.com" before calling the functions to sign up or sign in with email.

So you would be using email/password authentication, mapping <username> to <username>@yourowndomain.com

Answer 2

Appending a dummy domain at end is a kind of a patch up and should be avoided. To enable username login just follow these simple steps.

Sign Up

During sign up take the userid , email and password . Register the user with normal email and password. On Success of it save the email against the user_id in a separate node(branch).

mButtonSignUp.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {         @Override         public void onClick(View v) {             if(isValid()){                 mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);                 final String userId = mEditTextUserId.getText().toString();                 final String emailId = mEditTextEmail.getText().toString() ;                 String password = mEditTextPassword.getText().toString() ;                 firebaseRef.createUser(emailId, password, new Firebase.ResultHandler() {                     @Override                     public void onSuccess() {                        firebaseRef.child("user_ids").child(userId).setValue(emailId);                        Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(),"You are successfully registered ",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();                        mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.GONE);                     }                      @Override                     public void onError(FirebaseError firebaseError) {                         mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.GONE);                         Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(),firebaseError.toString(),Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();                     }                 });              }         }     }); 

Database

Database structure will look like this

Login

Check if the user has entered an email or userId. If it is a email id then directly perform login with it otherwise fetch the email id associated with the username and perform login.

    Button buttonLogIn = (Button)findViewById(R.id.button_login);     buttonLogIn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {         @Override         public void onClick(View v) {                           mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);             String username = mEditTextEmail.getText().toString() ;             final String password = mEditTextPassWord.getText().toString() ;            //  Check if it is an email or not              if(android.util.Patterns.EMAIL_ADDRESS.matcher(username).matches())                 {                 performLogin(username,password);             }else{               //get the emailId associated with the username               firebaseRef.child("user_ids").child(username)               .addListenerForSingleValueEvent(new ValueEventListener() {                     @Override                     public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot dataSnapshot) {                         if(dataSnapshot!=null){                             String userEmail =  dataSnapshot.getValue(String.class);                             performLogin(userEmail,password);                         }                     }                      @Override                     public void onCancelled(FirebaseError firebaseError) {                         //Handle Error                     }                 });             }          }     }); 

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private void performLogin(String emailId, String password) {     firebaseRef.authWithPassword(emailId,password, new Firebase.AuthResultHandler() {         @Override         public void onAuthenticated(AuthData authData) {             uid = authData.getUid() ;             Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), authData.toString(), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();         }          @Override         public void onAuthenticationError(FirebaseError firebaseError) {             Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), firebaseError.toString(), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();         }     }); }