how to get current user on firebase

Question

I would like to know how how to get the current user. I am making a function where the user is creating a group and would like to add the user making the group to it at the same time. I can make the group fine, that was simple enough. But I do not know how to get to the user object outside of the simple login object.

I'm sorry if there are several topics stating this already, but I have been looking for hours and have not been able to find anything that explains it. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The currently logged in user is returned from Simple Login's callback. This callback runs when your user authenticates, or if your user is already authenticated, it runs at the time of page load.

Take this code form the simple login docs:

var myRef = new Firebase("https://<your-firebase>.firebaseio.com");
var authClient = new FirebaseSimpleLogin(myRef, function(error, user) {
  if (error) {
    // an error occurred while attempting login
    console.log(error);
  } else if (user) {
    // user authenticated with Firebase
    console.log("User ID: " + user.uid + ", Provider: " + user.provider);
  } else {
    // user is logged out
  }
});

The user object is exposed in the callback. It's only in scope during the execution of that callback, so if you want to use it outside, store it in a variable for reuse later like this:

var currentUser = {};
var myRef = new Firebase("https://<your-firebase>.firebaseio.com");
var authClient = new FirebaseSimpleLogin(myRef, function(error, user) {
  if (error) {
    // an error occurred while attempting login
    console.log(error);
  } else if (user) {
    // user authenticated with Firebase
    currentUser = user;
  } else {
    // user is logged out
  }
});
...

// Later on in your code (that runs some time after that login callback fires)
console.log("User ID: " + currentUser.uid + ", Provider: " + currentUser.provider);