Enable Custom User Data¶

Overview¶

You can store arbitrary data about your application users in a MongoDB collection and configure MongoDB Realm to automatically expose each user's data in a field of their user object. For example, you might store a user's preferred language, date of birth, or their local timezone.

MongoDB Realm automatically finds a user's custom data document and includes it in their access token when they log in. You can access the data in the custom_data field of the user's object in function context, the %%user expansion, and their client application access token.

MongoDB Realm does not manage custom user documents so you are responsible for creating and deleting them. The underlying data is a regular MongoDB document, so you can use standard CRUD operations through the MongoDB Atlas service to define and modify a user's custom data. You can also use authentication triggers to dynamically update user documents, such as storing the time of their most recent login in the lastLogin field.

const user = context.user;
const speaksEnglish = user.custom_data.primaryLanguage === "English";

Configuration¶

MongoDB Realm stores MongoDB documents that correspond to custom user data in a linked MongoDB Atlas cluster. When you configure custom user data for your application, you specify:

• the custom user data cluster
• the custom user data database
• the custom user data collection in which custom user data documents are stored
• the user ID field used to map custom user data documents to users (via user ID)

Configure Permissions for Custom User Data¶

Because custom user data belongs to a specific user, it could contain personal or private information depending on the needs of your application. If your application stores such information in custom user data, you should restrict access to custom user data appropriately. While the permissioning model of your custom user data depends on the needs of your application, consider using one of the following permission models to restrict read and write access to privileged users only:

• Make your custom user data readable and writable by only the user whose ID matches the user ID field of each custom user data document. In this permissioning model, the user writes custom user data using MongoDB Data Access or Sync.
• Make your custom user data readable and writable by only a system user in a system function. Create a system function that handles edits to custom user data for a user using the user.id value provided by the function context. In this permissioning model, the user writes custom user data using the Functions API.

Procedure¶

Realm UIRealm CLI

1

Navigate to the Custom User Data Configuration Screen¶

You can configure and enable custom user data in the Realm UI. To get to the configuration page, click App Users in the left navigation menu and then select the Custom User Data tab.

2

Enable Custom User Data¶

To configure MongoDB Realm to associate data in a collection with your application's users, set the Enable Custom User Data toggle to On.

click to enlarge

3

Specify the Custom User Data Collection¶

You must store the custom data for your application's users in a single collection of a linked MongoDB Atlas cluster. To configure your application to read user data from this collection, you need to specify the following values:

• Cluster Name: The name of a linked MongoDB cluster that contains the custom user data collection.
• Database Name: The name of the MongoDB database that contains the custom user data collection.
• Collection Name: The name of the MongoDB collection that contains custom user data.

click to enlarge

4

Specify the User ID Field¶

Every document in the custom user data collection should have a field that maps it to a specific application user. The field must be present in every document that maps to a user and contain the user's ID as a string.

Specify the name of the field that contains each user's ID in the User ID Field input.

Note

If two documents contain the same user ID, Realm only maps the first matching document to the user.

5

Deploy the Updated Application¶

Once you have configured the custom user data collection, you can make custom user data available to client applications by deploying your application. To deploy a draft application from the Realm UI:

1. Click Deploy in the left navigation menu.
2. Find the draft in the deployment history table and then click Review & Deploy Changes.
3. Review the diff of changes and then click Deploy.

Once the application successfully deploys, Realm begins to associate custom data with users. When a user logs in, Realm automatically queries the custom user data collection for a document where the specified User ID Field contains the user's ID. If a document matches, Realm exposes the data in the document in the custom_data field of that user's user object.

Access Custom User Data from a Client Application¶