Where does firebase save it's simple login users?

user15163 picture user15163 · Feb 26, 2015 · Viewed 10.9k times · Source

I am currently using firebase to make an ionic app. I am using firebase simple login for social auth (facebook, twitter, email & password). The auth works perfectly, it $broadcasts the authed user. However it doesn't seem to create a user in the actual firebase db. I was wondering how I can get the users that have been authed using my app. Thanks, you help is greatly appreciated :).

Answer

Frank van Puffelen picture Frank van Puffelen · Feb 26, 2015

For most of the authentication protocols it supports, Firebase doesn't store user data anywhere. Even for the protocols where it does store data (I only know of email+password doing this), it stores this information in a place that your application can't access (though you can find those users in the dashboard of your Firebase).

To quote the Firebase documentation:

It does not store profile or user state in your Firebase. To persist user data you must save it to your Firebase.

What most applications end up doing, is keeping a list of users inside their Firebase that they manage themselves. So when a user first authenticates with the application, it creates a node under /users/<uid> that contains the information for that user.

See this section of the Firebase documentation that describes storing user data.