Store User’s Personal Information with SUSI

In this blog, I discuss how SUSI.AI stores personal information of it’s users. This personal information is mostly about usernames/links to different websites like LinkedIn, GitHub, Facebook, Google/Gmail etc. To store such details, we have a dedicated API. Endpoint is :

https://api.susi.ai/aaa/storePersonalInfo.json

In this API/Servlet, storing the details and getting the details, both the aspects are covered. At the time of making the API call, user has an option either to ask the server for a list of available store names along with their values or request the server to store the value for a particular store name. If a store name already exists and a client makes a call with new/updated value, The servlet will update the value for that particular store name.

The reason you are looking at minimal user role as USER is quite obvious, i.e. these details correspond to a particular user. Hence neither we want someone writing such information anonymously nor we want this information to be visible to anonymous user until allowed by the user.

In the next steps, we start evaluating the API call made by the client. We look at the combination of the parameters present in the request. If the request is to fetch list of available stores, server first checks if Accounting object even has a JSONObject for “stores” or not. If not found, it sends an error message “No personal information is added yet.” and error code 420. Prior to all these steps, server first generates an accounting object for the user. If found, details are encoded as JSONObject’s parameter. Look at the code below to understand things fairly.

Accounting accounting = DAO.getAccounting(authorization.getIdentity());
        if(post.get("fetchDetails", false)) {
            if(accounting.getJSON().has("stores")){
                JSONObject jsonObject = accounting.getJSON().getJSONObject("stores");
                json.put("stores", jsonObject);
                json.put("accepted", true);
                json.put("message", "details fetched successfully.");
                return new ServiceResponse(json);
            } else {
                throw new APIException(420, "No personal information is added yet.");
            }
        }

If the request was not to fetch the list of available stores, It means client wants server to save a new field or update a previous value for that of a store name. A combination of If-else evaluates whether the call even contains required parameters.

if (post.get(“storeName”, null) == null) {
throw new APIException(422, “Bad store name encountered!”);
}

String storeName = post.get(“storeName”, null);
if (post.get(“value”, null) == null) {
throw new APIException(422, “Bad store name value encountered!”);
}

If request contains all the required data, then store name & value are extracted as key-value pair from the request.

In the next steps, since the server is expected to store list of the store names for a particular user, First the identity is gathered from the already present authorization object in “serviceImpl” method. If the server finds a “null” identity, It throws an error with error code 400 and error message “Specified User Setting not found, ensure you are logged in”.

Else, server first checks if a JSONObject with key “stores” exists or not. If not, It will create an object and will put the key value pair in the new JSONObject. Otherwise it would anyways do so.

Since these details are for a particular account (i.e. for a particular user), these are placed in the Accounting.json file. For better knowledge, Look at the code snippet below.

if (accounting.getJSON().has("stores")) {
                accounting.getJSON().getJSONObject("stores").put(storeName, value);
            } else {
                JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(true);
                jsonObject.put(storeName, value);
                accounting.getJSON().put("stores", jsonObject);
            }

            json.put("accepted", true);
            json.put("message", "You successfully updated your account information!");
            return new ServiceResponse(json);

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