The id xxx has already been used with another record of type

I’m attempting to check if a user model exists before creating it but I’m getting: Error: Assertion Failed: The id xxx has already been used with another record of type app@model:user.

This is my code:

// authData comes from Firebase
checkUser: function() {
   var savedUser = this.get('store').find('user', this.get('authData.uid'));
   savedUser.then(function(savedUser) {
      self.set('user', savedUser);
   }, function(user) {
      self.createUser();
   });
},

createUser: function(user) {
   var self = this;

  // it fails here!

   var newUser = this.get('store').createRecord('user', {
      id: this.get('authData.uid'),
      created: new Date().getTime()
   }).save().then(function(newUser) {
      Ember.debug('created a new user');
      self.set('user', newUser);
   }, function() {
      Ember.debug('could not save user');
      self.set('user', null);
   });
}

If I leave the check out, the code runs but overwrites the user model on every login, which I don’t believe is desirable. I’m using Ember 1.8.0-beta.4 and Emberfire 1.2.7.

[tstirrat]

This does not appear to be a bug in emberfire, rather that ember-data creates a temporary record in its store when you do find (regardless of whether it is found or not):

var user = store.find('user', 'simplelogin:1'); // does not exist on server
store.recordForId('user', 'simplelogin:1'); // exists!

here’s my workaround:

var id = 'simplelogin:1';
store.find('user', id)
  .then(function(u) {
    console.log('found user with id', id);
    return u;
  })
  .catch(function () {
    console.log('can create with id', id);
    store.recordForId('user', id).unloadRecord(); // remove the unresolved record
    return store.createRecord('user', {
      id: id,
      created: +new Date()
    });
  })
  .then(function (u) {
   // u = found or created user
   console.log('found or created', u);
  });

[oskarrough]

Hey @20v100, there are two parts: checking if a record exists and if not, create it. So I ended up replacing the check with native Firebase code instead of using the Emberfire adapter. It’s a temporary solution that works for me so far .

// Check if the user exists using native Firebase because of a emberfire problem with "id already in use"
ref.child('users').child(userId).once('value', function(snapshot) {
   var exists = (snapshot.val() !== null);
   userExistsCallback(userId, exists);
});

// Do the right thing depending on whether the user exists
function userExistsCallback(userId, exists) {
   Ember.debug('user exists? ' + exists);
   if (exists) {
      // do something
   } else {
      // do something
   }
}