Enable user to import csv/excel to firebase - possible?

[Bo Coughlin]

One aspect/feature of our app is the ability to import a simple contact list ( name, email ) - normally we would simply parse this server side and post back to mongodb or whatever.  Was looking at doing this with firebase - initially thought we might be able to post the file to queue & use worker to parse and post back, however, this would require firebase to be able to handle the upload...which after an extensive search does not appear to be possible.

We could limit the user to copy/paste csv and process in browser but not the most elegant solution; if we have to post to our backend it breaks our goal of simple consumer endpoints; inserting our server back into an active role, something we really would like to avoid.  Have discussed S3 and/or service such as filepicker.io but first thought we'd post here before going though what appears to be just more overhead to accomplish a relatively simple task.  sláinte - bo

[Michael Wulf]

Hi Bo,

File uploads are anything but simple. And most of this is as it should be, since uploading files from a computer requires a great deal of security and restraint. Here's a pretty thorough discussion on the process of uploading files from JavaScript, including at least 5 different practical approaches: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166221/how-can-i-upload-files-asynchronously-with-jquery

It sounds like it would be a pretty grand feature to upload a file directly via the REST API, but at present, that's beyond the purview of the REST API. Our focus is on real-time data, and binary file uploads would be, by definition, rather static.

With that in mind, we will probably have some tools for uploading static assets to Firebase Hosting in the near future. For now, I think that filepicker.io and similar services provide a great way of abstractin the complexities of file security and converting these to raw data.

Cheers,

Kato

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Bo Coughlin <b...@kikstand.com> wrote:

One aspect/feature of our app is the ability to import a simple contact list ( name, email ) - normally we would simply parse this server side and post back to mongodb or whatever.  Was looking at doing this with firebase - initially thought we might be able to post the file to queue & use worker to parse and post back, however, this would require firebase to be able to handle the upload...which after an extensive search does not appear to be possible.

We could limit the user to copy/paste csv and process in browser but not the most elegant solution; if we have to post to our backend it breaks our goal of simple consumer endpoints; inserting our server back into an active role, something we really would like to avoid.  Have discussed S3 and/or service such as filepicker.io but first thought we'd post here before going though what appears to be just more overhead to accomplish a relatively simple task.  sláinte - bo

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebase Google Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to firebase-tal...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fireba...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.