How to export all user entities for all users of an app

zespizatl

How to export user entities for all users of an app?

I see how to export all user entities for a given user, that doesn't help because I need all users at once, not one by one.

I see how to export all users in the reports section, but even with all options selected, the export does not include user entity data.

Am I missing something or is it not possible?
Surely there is a way to query the tables directly... I see some of the APIs allow for MongoDB style queries, is there a location I can do this at?

zespizatl

My initial question focused on user entity data, but I really want to know this for all of my data. If I start using other feature sets that do not have a pretty UI export in the portal, how do I access the data for them?

Paul Winterhalder

Hi Zespizati,

We don't currently have portal support for exporting all the user entities of an app.

Owned Custom Entities are an alternative to User Entities - and the Global Monitoring support for them - available under Global > Data > Custom Entities does have an export feature.

We aim in brainCloud to make as much of that data visible and editable for you. There is also the API Explorer that can be used to view / edit data that is not currently exposed via the portal.

Paul.

zespizatl

Hi Paul,

Thank you for the reply. If I understand correctly, it sounds like there is no way to access the data generated using the user entities feature, at least not in a meaningful way. I could live with that since it appears custom entities will address that need.

Is there a list of what features to avoid if I want to access the data generated with those features?

Why does braincloud not offer devs access to the database/tables directly? I'm assuming each account does not get their own database, instead its a shared structure of some sort, and this makes it technically challenging to expose the data?

Also, am I missing something fundamental? Access to all important data seems like an absolute necessity, but it appears only a minority of BaaS providers have this feature. How do devs get by without this?

Paul Winterhalder

Hi Zespizati,

For efficiency, brainCloud does use shared structures for most data collections (custom entities are actually one of the exceptions).

brainCloud works very hard to give developers both API and Portal access to their data - as we believe that that makes the features easier to use and understand... (and makes the platform more useful for debugging and support purposes).

Exporting features are largely a function of demand vs. cost of implementation. Exporting isn't as simple as one might expect (or want) - as the data needs to be gathered in such a way as to not affect the performance of the system as a whole. There are also privacy and security concerns to consider.

That said - we'll put you solidly in the +1 column for more export features!

I hope this offers some perspective. Have a good week-end!

Paul.

Panagiotis Milios

@zespizatl A possible alternative, If you want absolute freedom over your data is to create your own (serverless or dedicated) cluster in MongoDB. Use MongoDB's functions service to expose http endpoints for crud operations and use braincloud's rest api through cloud code to communicate with your endpoints to MongoDB. Also, make sure to host your cluster in US-East (US-VA area) to minimize latency.

It's inefficient but you'll have absolute control over your data.

zespizatl

Thank you both for the helpful replies. I am educating myself further and exploring options. Depending on what I decide to pursue as the final option, I may be back