Exploring the Public and User Channels in Couchbase Sync Gateway

A Sync Function is one of the fundamental components of Sync Gateway: its main responsibility is to define which user has access to which documents. In this screencast, you’ll learn how to use the public channel (also known as the ! channel) to synchronize documents to users that haven’t logged into your app yet. This feature is particularly useful when designing the on boarding journey with dynamic data that can be changed on the backend and pulled automatically when the user starts the app for the first time. We’ll consider a note taking application and explore the following:

1. Use the public channel to insert the Getting Started note, you can think of it as the tutorial note when the user starts the app for the first time
2. Map the note created by a registered user to a channel that is only accessible by that user
3. Enforce write permissions with the requireUser method
4. Test the Sync Function with curl commands

Find the code for this lesson

You can find the Sync Gateway config file below:

And the curl commands to test the Sync Function:

1. Persist a Public Note via the Admin API

   curl -X POST https://localhost:4985/notes/ 
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
       -d '{"security": "public", "title": "Getting Started"}'

2. User Authentication

   curl -vX POST https://localhost:4984/notes/_session 
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
       -d '{"name": "william", "password": "pass"}'

3. Persist a User Note

   curl -X POST https://localhost:4984/notes/ 
       -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
       -H "Cookie: SyncGatewaySession=PASTE_COOKIE_VALUE" 
       -d '{"user_name": "william", "title": "Overview of the user journey"}'