How to know which user has generated a Firebase event?

Question

I am using Firebase real-time database in my project and for now, I am not using any authentication method meaning that all sign-in methods on Firebase are disabled and there is no rule defined on the Firebase database too:

{
  "rules": {
    ".read": true,
    ".write": true
  }
}

I am trying to implement a collaborative text editing app so several users at the same time might be updating the same text. So in my app I am observing the corresponding text editing events sent by Firebase and therefore can keep the text synced for all users working on the same content.

My question is, when a Text Editing event is received by the app how come I can know who (which user) has made that change on Firebase (Whether the event I just received is as a result of a change in the text by User1 or User2 or so on). Because currently, I know that somebody has made a change in the text (because I receive an event) but I don't know who had made it. Any help? Thanks

Any general guidance would help.

Answer 1

If you want to identify users without requiring them to sign in, you're looking for Firebase's anonymous authentication . In Objective-C this is as simple as:

[[FIRAuth auth]
 signInAnonymouslyWithCompletion:^(FIRUser *_Nullable user, NSError *_Nullable error) {
   // ...
 }];

And then you can identify the user with:

[[[FIRAuth auth].currentUser].uid];