Meteor user

“Getting Started with Meteor.js JavaScript Framework” by Isaac Strack is a great introduction to a powerful tool.

User accounts in three easy steps

Meteor rolls its own user accounts system, and getting it running on your application is a three step process:

1. command line: Add the relevant packages

   $ meteor add accounts-base
   accounts-base: A user account system
   $ meteor add accounts-password
   accounts-password: Password support for accounts
   $ meteor add email
   email: Send email messages
   $ meteor add accounts-ui
   accounts-ui: Simple templates to add login widgets to an app

2. html: Add a div to hold the login button

   <div style="float:right; margin-right:20px;">
   {{loginButtons align="right"}}
   </div>

3. client javascript: Add an Accounts config

   Accounts.ui.config({
   passwordSignupFields: 'USERNAME_AND_OPTIONAL_EMAIL'
   });

The catch

While the server side and client side code looks similar they are definitely not interchangeable. Server code run on the client side will likely fail silently, but client code run on the server will crash the app. One place where I got tripped up was accessing the userId:

Server side this.userId

In Meteor server side javascript the context is clear: this is called in the context of a Meteor object, and you can therefore make inquiries about its properties. {“Use this.userId inside the server publish function”} to access the id of the current user (or null if no user is logged in — from the docs).

Client side: Meteor.userId()

In the Meteor client side, this has a different context: the window object. The window object has a userId property that can be set at Document.ready(), but in the case that a user logs out and another user logs in to that same window without a page refresh, window.userId will retain the id of the first user. {“Use Meteor.userId() anywhere BUT in the server publish function”} to get the current user id (or null if no user is logged in — from the docs).

Thanks to this stackoverflow response, the Meteor docs, and packtpub’s awesome support page for helping me get reacquainted with javascript contexts.

Awesome