I am working on a project and one of the key components is creating customized user profiles. I already have a schema design for the user data that will generate said profile. But I am lost on how the technology works.
I am mostly front-end so it has been sort of overwhelming. The goal is to allow multiple user profile creations and so far I have only seen that this can be achievable via NodeJs or PHP. I have not found any guides.
I am not sure if I am asking the right questions.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.
Since you mention you already have schema for the user table, I assume you are going to design your own database and backend node.js API to handle user profiles. You may want to build authentication functionalities in the future. If you are not familiar with Node.js yet, I recommend you to start with https://www.tutorialspoint.com/nodejs/index.htm. It's a good tutorial for beginners.
The whole purpose of a back-end node.js API is building numbers of service with specified route. Once a http request is made to a particular path, it takes parameters and execute some script. In you case the scripts will do something in database containing user profile data, for example, add a row in your data table. This operation is equivalent to creating a new user. Then, the API send response to front-end.
Keep in mind maintaining user profile data is nothing special than regular data. You should be able to pick it up with a couple of days training if you know javascriopt. But if you have to build authentication functionality you need more technologies.
Related
I have 2 systems let's call them i and j. Each have it's own database.
Each have a registration page, where a user is inserted in a user table.
What is the best way to synchronize both tables, where if any user registers at system i it will be also registered at system j.
Notes:
I cannot read from each other databases directly.
I can do small changes in the code if needed and it will not affect the system performance or natural behavior.
I can create API's for both systems if needed.
I can add any tables or fields if needed.
I can create any cron jobs unless it will affect the performance of the system or server.
I'm using cPanel.
Technologies:
MySQL
PHP
REST API's
The fact that you list cpanel as a technology shows you're working with an inflexible budget hosting vendor. So it's unlikely they'll cooperate in setting up background tasks (cron jobs) to merge your user tables behind the scenes. (cpanel isn't a technology: it's a system administration user interface provided by hosting vendors who don't trust their customers' skills.)
So. you should design and implement a REST API in the code of both your apps to perform user registration and authentication tasks. You didn't show us the details of your app, so it's hard to design it for you. Still it seems likely you'll have to implement these operations:
PUT user
DELETE user
GET user
POST user to validate a user's password, etc. (Don't use GET to pass secret information: GET request parameters go into server logs.)
PATCH to update details of a user.
If you get the API working, whenever you create/retrieve/update/delete user information in one app, you'll use the API to change it in the other.
Your best bet would be to create a third app just for user management, and have both your existing apps use it. That way you're sure to have one coherent source of truth about users. But you can do it just within two apps.
I'm fairly new to programming and I'm studying App development with Ionic and using Laravel as a backend. So far I have created a simple system with sign up and login of users and creation of "events" by the users. I have made the relation between the users and events as the app will need to know which user created an event, and the participants of such event.
Now, I was wondering about adding a messaging system between users and obviously push notifications and stuff and came across Firebase. I've read about it before, but haven't really used it so I'm not quite familiar with it.
My question is, is it possible or even recommended that I use both MySQL and Firebase in my app or should I just stick to one? I've read about Websockets if I stick with Laravel, but on the other hand, Firebase also handles user login and registration in case I want to move to Firebase completely. I'm having some technical questions, such as:
if I'm using both MySQL and Firebase in my app, how would I connect the user that was registered with an ID and a username stored in my MySQL to Firebase, which will need to know which user has sent a message to another one? Can that be done, or recommended?
Should I just stick with just one for my use case (MySQL or Firebase, instead of both)?
I have researched about use cases similar to mine and couldn't find anything, if you guys have come across such situation, could you recommend any materials? It would be much appreciated!
Thanks a lot everyone! I hope my questions were clear, if you need more details, please let me know!
If you decide to use Firebase, it comes with a built-in authentication system so you wouldn't need a MySQL database or your own server.
If you decide to use both anyways (if you have a good reason to do so), you would have to handle all the logic for copying the authenticated user id over to firebase (and validating access) on your own server. If you don't need to do that just keep it simple: Firebase or your own server + MySQL.
This may be a total shot in the dark, but looking for a service that basically exposes a database model as a restful service which we can query from the front-end (eliminating the need for a middle layer/server).
The idea would be simple enough, create a database with say a products table. This would then be exposed automatically via an API that represents that table. On your front end the user could enter text or choose several options and then via JS you could hit that endpoint (with the user's choices as parameters which inevitably becomes a SELECT and retrieves the data), that returns some JSON back in the form of results and via JS you display it on the front-end.
I have to believe something like this exists and maybe I am not being clear enough, but its basically an auto-created backend. This would be great for rapid prototyping.
Thanks in advance if anyone has ideas!
I'm new to webdev and I'm trying to use passport for registration/authentication on a site I'm setting up. I'm also going to write an application in node later on that will be using some of the user data (users will need to provide an API key for an account on another site that I will use to pull data into the application).
At the moment, the main issue I'm having is figuring out what goes where. I've found plenty of resources that explain how to create an app using passport, but nothing shows how it would be incorporated into your website or where the files should be in relation to your website. I'm relatively new to Node.js, and while I've written a few small applications I have never hosted them anywhere.
Bonus question: I'm using MongoDB with passport and I was also planning to use it to store some JSON my application will be receiving from API calls. However, I wanted to use MySQL to store some data as well. More specifically, I'm planning to save the raw JSON then I'll create a relational database out of the data I need from the JSON and then keep the rest in MongoDB for easy access. Is this common/smart, or should I focus on keeping everything in my MongoDB? I'm relatively new to NoSQL.
Thanks in advance for any help.
I would reference this tutorial. I just recently used this to help myself with a new application. Also there is an example of the same thing but in SQL here. So not sure what you mean by " where the files should be in relation to your website". The information related to to authentication should go in your database.
To your "bonus question" you can use two databases. The key here is to ask yourself why and what are the true needs for data, and how is this data accessed and used. From ground up I would like one and stick with it. If at some point later you realize a certain type of data would be better in a different database then you can add it.
Side note: look into an IDE such as webstorm to help you out.
Backstory
I work for a company that has an online site that allows user to text personal information for collection. We collect the data, and make it available online. Users can choose to share the data with other users.
Going Forward
At some point, this may become classified an FDA-governed medical tool. In anticipation, we'd like to have in place a logging system that shows each time someone accesses our users' data, whether it be the user themselves, another authorized user, or a support person.
Current Architecture
We are currently running Ruby/Rails, and using a MySQL database. The personal information is encrypted in the database.
Data Access for Support
Today, support personnel can access data one of three ways:
admin site The admin site is limited to whatever screens we develop. While we don't currently, we could easily add logging to keep an audit trail of who accessed which data using the admin tool.
sql client I use MySQLWorkbench to access production. However, when connected this way, all personal information (user name, cell number, etc), is encrypted.
Ruby Rails console - Finally, support can log into one of the production boxes and use the Ruby/Rails console from command line. Ruby will decrypt the data, so we can do some simple things such as
u=User.find_all_by_state('active')
and it will return the recordset of all users with state='active', and decrypt their personal information in the resultset.
Holy Grail
logging
easy access for support
I'd love to be have a way to allow easy support access (once authenticated) to the data, but would log everything that is accessed (read or updated). That way, if I'm checking out my buddy's ex-wife's data for example, it gets logged to a place where I can't get in and clean it the audit trail. (See Google firing Gmail employee for an example of employees breaching the data policies).
Anyone have ideas, thoughts, experiences, suggestions with this issue?
hey devguy. This was a issue for me a couple months back. We ended up centralizing our mysql queires so that we could start to track all information coming in and out. Unfortunately the class I wrote is in PHP but the idea behind it could make it very easy to start logging.
https://code.google.com/p/php-centralized-mysql-controller/
Try stored procedures. Make all code use the stored procedures for CRUD activities. This defines an API that your developers can use while business rules are global enforced (don't return entire SSN values, but only last 4 digits, etc).
This serves as the basis for an external API as well.
If you want logging/auditing, you put it in the procedure.
This protects you from everyone except the DBAs.