How to delete a user with UID from Real Time Database in Firebase?

Question

The database structure looks like this

-LGw89Lx5CA9mOe1fSRQ {
    uid: "FzobH6xDhHhtjbfqxlHR5nTobL62"
    image: "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/8950378298..."
    location: "Lorem ipsum, lorem ipsum"
    name: "Lorem ipsum"
    provider: "twitter.com"
}

How can I delete everything, including the -LGw89Lx5CA9mOe1fSRQ key programmatically?

I looked at this, but it's outdated and deprecated Firebase: removeUser() but need to remove data stored under that uid

I've also looked at this , but this requires for user to constantly sign in (I'm saving the user ID in localStorage ) and it returns null on refresh if I write firebase.auth().currentUser . Data records and user accounts are created through social network providers and I can see the data both on Authentication and Database tab in the Firebase console.

I've tried with these piece of code but it does nothing.

 // currentUser has a value of UID from Firebase
 // The value is stored in localStorage
 databaseChild.child(currentUser).remove()
   .then(res => {
       // res returns 'undefined'
       console.log('Deleted', res);
   })
   .catch(err => console.error(err));

The bottom line is, I need to delete the user (with a specific UID) from the Authentication tab and from the Database at the same time with one click.

I know that there is a Firebase Admin SDK but I'm creating a Single Page Application and I don't have any back end code. Everything is being done on the front end.

Any kind of help is appreciated.

Answer 1

With suggestions from @jeremyw and @peter-haddad I was able to get exactly what I want. Here is the code that is hosted on Firebase Cloud Functions

const functions = require('firebase-functions'),
    admin = require('firebase-admin');

admin.initializeApp();

exports.deleteUser = functions.https.onRequest((request, response) => {
    const data = JSON.parse(request.body),
        user = data.uid;

    // Delete user record from Authentication
    admin.auth().deleteUser(user)
        .then(() => {
            console.log('User Authentication record deleted');
            return;
        })
        .catch(() => console.error('Error while trying to delete the user', err));

    // Delete user record from Real Time Database
    admin.database().ref().child('people').orderByChild('uid').equalTo(user).once('value', snap => {
        let userData = snap.val();
        for (let key of Object.keys(userData)) {
            admin.database().ref().child('people').child(key).remove();
        }
    });

    response.send(200);
});

Also, if you are facing CORS errors, add the mode: 'no-cors' option to your fetch() function and it will work without any problems.

Answer 2

The link you already found for deleting the user-login-account client-side is your only option if you want to keep the action on the client. Usually you want to keep most of the actions for things like account creation/deletion on the server for security reasons, and Firebase forces the issue. You can only delete your account if you were recently logged in, you can't have client-side start deleting old/random accounts.

The better option is to create your own Cloud Function to handle everything related to deleting a user. You would have to use the Admin SDK that you already found for this... but you could have that Cloud Function perform as many actions as you want - it will have to delete the user from the Auth tab, and delete the matching data in the Database.