Duplicate users tables with different ids?

[MarkLyck]

I'm investigating migrating an app from Supabase to convex with better-auth.

I got the project working with login/signup and creating an organization. However I feel like I'm missing something?

The BetterAuth tables seems to be in a different sandboxed "component" from the app tables, and I don't see a way to access them. The docs recommend basically creating a duplicate "users" table to store users in the app table. But the ids don't match, and if you try to make them match it throws an error.

This means when you get your user id from better-auth it doesn't match the user in the users table in the app component?

Is it really intentional that when using BetterAuth with Convex you have duplicate tables of users, with different ids, and no way to query the original BetterAuth table from the app?

If that's the expected pattern, how do you map your user from the better-auth session to the user in the DB?

Also for users there's an onCreateUser hook to sync with, but I see no equivalent for organizations and teams? So how are you supposed to effectively manage those without access to the BetterAuth tables?

I'm probably missing something?

[erquhart]

So first, you're not missing anything.

Components being sandboxed is an intentional feature - third party code doesn't have direct access to your data this way.

The convex plugin and database adapter handle mapping so the user id you get from better auth is the user id from your own application users table (if you're seeing differently please let me know where so we can fix). This includes the user id in the session.

So you can think of the user table in the Better Auth component as more of a userMetadata table. It has core auth fields, and you extend that with your own users table.

Regarding teams and orgs and other plugins that reference the user by id, the Convex database adapter takes care of mapping to the correct user there as well for relation purposes...although now that you mention it the userId field on those plugin tables does point back to the userMetadata id, which is probably unhelpful. For now I would say ignore that field.

But managing those tables works the same as anywhere else - use authClient.* methods in the client and auth.api.* methods on the backend. Here again, if you're seeing this be ineffective or encountering a bug, please report!

All of that said, the current plan for the next minor release (0.8.0) is to allow tables to be opted into the app space, so you would have the option to have a single users table with all user data instead of a split table, and you could move plugin tables like orgs and teams out as well if desired for more control.

I'll also point out that, if the app you're migrating has thousands of users, you may find the org and admin plugins' more ambitious queries (like admin.listUsers() with custom sorting and filtering via the plugin api) may struggle currently. The upcoming functionality I just mentioned targets this as well - large orgs using admin/org plugins extensively will need to be able to do things like add indexes to those schema tables to support their queries, and to do things like actual paginated queries when listing lots of users.

Lastly, the #better-auth channel in the Convex Discord is a great place to ask questions and get responses. Here is fine too, just sometimes delayed by comparison.

[MarkLyck]

@erquhart Thanks for the quick response! And sorry for using issues to ask a question, I'll check out the Discord channel next time :)

You are completely right about the user id from authClient does indeed match the one from the users table in the app component, not the one in the sandboxed BetterAuth component. That does explain a lot.

However I don't get that behavior for the organizations.

If I use const { data: organizations } = authClient.useListOrganizations()

it returns a list of my user's organizations with ids from the BetterAuth component. Not the ids from my app's organizations table. Is there any way to solve this?

otherwise it sounds like 0.8.0 will solve my issues as well, if I can migrate my users, organizations and teams tables to the app space.

Thanks for your time and the explanations.

[erquhart]

it returns a list of my user's organizations with ids from the BetterAuth component. Not the ids from my app's organizations table. Is there any way to solve this?

I need to look into this, would need a fix from the component side. Thanks for raising.

And there's no problem asking questions in issues! Just might not get as fast of a response as Discord.

Will circle back here on the userId issue.

[mm919]

I see theres option to customize the users schema including plugins like organization, all the apis are there for managing these resources. So my question is if it's necessary to add custom users, organization and teams table in app table? I would rather use the built in better auth component schema to not have to deal with updates. Also there are no hooks for organization updates.

What is the advantage of having the users table in app if the better auth tables are fully customizable?

Very good job with the adapter ! Thank you

[erquhart]

@mm919 the better auth tables are in the component space, so the schema isn't actually accessible to you. This is the norm for components, but does clearly conflict with how Better Auth works with schemas. Addressing this is a current priority.