Flexibility of UserService

Question

Hi

I am evaluating various MBaaS solutions for our App backend. I really like App42 value proposition, pricing and loosely couple service concept and Custom code support.

However looking at API documentation - I am concerned ( flexibility of services) with below issues just looking at User API

1. User must have a emailId. Most of our users do not have emailId they have mobile number. So why is email Id mandatory

2. There is no way to attach additional information ( custom key-values ) to user or profile. I see that it is possible to attach key/values via NO-SQL service. but that also means two differen t API calls etc... to fetch a user.

3. We would like our users use mobile number as username that also means we should be able to change user name - which is not possible. in other words - we are looking for a user object with a unique Id generated by platform and be able to attach mobile number as username and hence to a user profile. is this possible ?

Thanks in advance.

/Kalyan

Answer 1

Hello Kalyan,

 

Thanks for choosing App42 Platform as a backend of your app. 

Please find my answer in line for your query:

1. User must have a emailId. Most of our users do not have emailId they have mobile number. So why is email Id mandatory
Ans:  You can create default email id for every user with combination of his mobile no. E.g: User mobile no is: 1234567890, you can append "@gmail.com" as email id to overcome on this. If user provide his email address, than update his email id, using this method. 

2. There is no way to attach additional information ( custom key-values ) to user or profile. I see that it is possible to attach key/values via NO-SQL service. but that also means two differen t API calls etc... to fetch a user.

Ans: You can save additional information of user along with createUser call in a single api call. You can fetch this information in get user call as well. 

3. We would like our users use mobile number as username that also means we should be able to change user name - which is not possible. in other words - we are looking for a user object with a unique Id generated by platform and be able to attach mobile number as username and hence to a user profile. is this possible ?

Ans: It is possible that you can use user mobile no as a unique identifier to register and display his meta information using Storage service. In this you can save his username as display name, which you can easily update using update method of Storage api.

Please have a look and let me if it answer your query. 

Thanks,

Himanshu Sharma

Comments

Thank you for clarification. I did not understand the 3rd answer co clearly. Do you have a unique identity for each user object and then a possibility to change current attached credentials ( username/password) ?

Other than that App42 BaaS looks very good on features and all other aspects.

Can you provide us some insight on

where are your data centers ? India ? US ? - Our app is targeted for indian customers. so we want to understand the latency aspects.

Do you have any scheduled downtime ? what is the same ?

do you have possibilities for on-premise deployment options ?

do you support us with data migration if we ever want to move to our own backend ?