Web Dev Cody•14mo ago

Convex + Clerk, what userId should I be storing

Currently in my system I've been storing the clerk userId on all my table models as a string. I find this to cause a little friction because I don't have access to the v.id("users") all throughout my system by default, but the issue is my getUserIdentity() is the convex id, so if I wanted to lookup the real user._id in my system I'd end up having to do an extra query in all of my auth checks basically. Is there a recommended approach for what I'm doing? I'm starting to think storing clerk user id (external third party auth service) on all my tables wasn't the best move

12 Replies

jamwt•14mo ago

Yeah, in general I’d just use it exactly once—on your own users table. Then use the doc _.id from that convex table as your user id everywhere in the rest of your app.

ian•14mo ago

One pattern is to use customQuery / customMutation to make authenticated versions of query / mutation that does something like:

const authQuery = customQuery(query, customCtx((ctx) => ({ user: getUserOrThrow(ctx) })));

const authQuery = customQuery(query, customCtx((ctx) => ({ user: getUserOrThrow(ctx) })));

where getUserOrThrow does the auth -> identity -> user lookup by tokenIdentifier / clerk uid. then use it like:

export const getName = authQuery({
  args: {},
  handler: async (ctx, args) => {
    console.log("userId: " + ctx.user._id);
    return ctx.user.name;
  }
});

export const getName = authQuery({
  args: {},
  handler: async (ctx, args) => {
    console.log("userId: " + ctx.user._id);
    return ctx.user.name;
  }
});

More info: https://stack.convex.dev/custom-functions

Customizing serverless functions without middleware

Re-use code and centralize request handler definitions with discoverability and type safety and without the indirection of middleware or nesting of wr...

Web Dev CodyOP•14mo ago

ok that's nice I'll try that

Michal Srb•14mo ago

(The saas-starter I keep linking also uses Clerk for login, and follows the approach Jamie outlined: https://github.com/xixixao/saas-starter/ )

GitHub

GitHub - xixixao/saas-starter: Convex, Clerk, Next.js, Convex Ents

Convex, Clerk, Next.js, Convex Ents. Contribute to xixixao/saas-starter development by creating an account on GitHub.

Web Dev CodyOP•14mo ago

😂 ok ok I’ll take some time to review it all why do you use tokenIdentity instead of user.id? this is nice, it has a lot of ready to go functionality 😎

ian•14mo ago

tokenIdentity is also unique across identity providers - so if you added a non-clerk provider and they re-used similar IDs (maybe they use incrementing integers?) the tokenIdentifier would still be unique. It's just a concatenation of the issuer and the ID I believe

Web Dev CodyOP•14mo ago

nice I'll refactor to use that then not sure i understand actually so if someone logs in with google and facebook, wouldn't that be two different clerk users and ids?

ian•14mo ago

Yes. This is actually at a level higher than that. If you used clerk & auth0, they might issue user ids that overlap. Probably unlikely but the guarantee is that tokenIdentifier won’t have id collisions between auth providers

Web Dev CodyOP•13mo ago

what's the suggested approach again when you depend on webhooks to know when your clerk user is actually created? I got an error where the UI threw an error after registering because the auth in convex was defined, but the user wasn't created from the webhook yet

Michal Srb•13mo ago

I think in our template we wait on the server in the client: https://github.com/thomasballinger/convex-clerk-users-table/blob/main/src/main.tsx

GitHub

convex-clerk-users-table/src/main.tsx at main · thomasballinger/con...

Contribute to thomasballinger/convex-clerk-users-table development by creating an account on GitHub.

Abhishek•13mo ago

In which file exactly ? Cant find the exact file

Web Dev CodyOP•13mo ago

@Abhishek the logic is in WaitForClerkUserData that component seems to query for the user info and prevent the page from rendering until it's defined

Convex + Clerk, what userId should I be storing

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