How should I managed a database for register/log in with Facebook & Twitter

Question

I am creating an iOS App which the user will be able to login to via his account with our website (internal), or via Facebook or Twitter.

What I would like to know is how should I manage the database in order to verify his Facebook / Twitter account with his internal account on my website?

I.e When the user logs in via his internal account, I just run a simple authentication check to see if his username and password are valid. However with Facebook and Twitter, I obviously can't do this as I don't have access to the user's password.

Thanks in advanced.

Answer 1

my suggestion is that you would create a new table for each of the login types and connect it to your users/members table.

for example - for facebook login you would have a facebook_users table to hold the user's data (such as name, pic and most important - fbid) than add a column named facebook_user_id to your existing members table.

in order to get the logged user from facebook you don't need to access his password... you should use the Facebook JS SDK and specifically the FB.getLoginStatus and FB.login function...

offcourse my suggestion is only one of many applicable ways to accomplish the task

Answer 2

Save fbid instead of fb-login user_name (you can keep both) of the user in your internal login table - A unique mapping exists (I'm sure something similar exists for twitter as well). Why do you need fb password for it? Moreover, you run the check on internal table to authenticate user account, but when using login from fb or twitter, isn't the user already authenticated?