Meteor publish overwrites another publish - meteor

I have two publish method as below but when I subscribe to one of the publish method in client search page, it is being overwritten with the other one which is meant for index page.
Server
Meteor.publish("task.index", function() {
TaskCollection.find()
}
Meteor.publish("task.index.search", function(state) {
TaskCollection.find({ state: state })
}
Client - search page
Meteor.subscribe("task.index.search", state)
// this will always be overwritten with "task.index" published collection
Client - index page
Meteor.subscribe("task.index")
Does anyone know how to avoid this?

Welcome to SO!
There is a high chance the "override" you see is just the normal Meteor behaviour for Publish/Subscribe mechanism.
Your "task.index" publication sends all your TaskCollection documents to the Client.
Therefore any other publication on that same TaskCollection will send documents that the Client already knows.
Then in your Client, filtering some documents from TaskCollection is independent from your subscription and publication. Just perform your TaskCollection.find({ state: state }) Client side, and you will get the documents you need.
When you publish only a subset of documents of a Collection, it happens that what you publish is exactly already the filtered documents that you want to display on your Client, therefore on your Client you just display all Collection documents you know of. But you have to understand that these are 2 different steps:
Subscription to send some documents to the Client. Several Subscriptions may be set, filling the same Collection on the Client.
Filtering on the Client, based on the documents sent by the (possibly several) Subscription(s).
See also: Publish subscribe doesn't seem to work

If your client index and search pages are different templates, you can subscribe to the documents at respective template level.
Client - search page:
Template.search.created = function () {
const template = this;
template.subscribe('task.index.search', state);
}
Template.search.rendered = function () {
console.log("Client search : " + TaskCollection.find().fetch().length);
}
Client - index page:
Template.index.created = function () {
const template = this;
template.subscribe('task.index');
}
Template.index.rendered = function () {
console.log(""Index : " + TaskCollection.find().fetch().length);
}
But, it is always advisable to filter the documents on the client as well.

Related

Fetch data for record edit page

I have a page that lets you edit user data. I'm using FlowRouter for the routing and it can be found on the route /employees/:id.
I need to update the detail form when data changes on the server and leave the route if it was deleted by other client.
I decided to use Tracker.autorun which informs me whenever the data changes. The previous user info is stored on the template so it's easy to tell if the record was deleted.
Template.UpdateEmployee.onCreated(function () {
const self = this;
self.subscribe('user', FlowRouter.getParam('id'));
self.autorun(function () {
const _id = FlowRouter.getParam('id');
const user = Meteor.users.findOne({_id});
if(!user && self.user)
FlowRouter.go('/employees');
self.user = user;
if(!user)
return;
user.email = user.emails[0].address;
$('.ui.form').form('set values',user);
});
});
And lastly in the onRendered callback I'm checking if the data was set on template as I believe not doing so could lead to data being available before the template is rendered and hence values wouldn't get set properly. Is this correct?
Template.UpdateEmployee.onRendered(function () {
if(this.user){
user.email = user.emails[0].address;
$('.ui.form').form('set values',user);
}
});
Are there any pitfalls to this solution?
I can see a couple drawbacks inherently. The first one is doing a find query on the client. Typically you would want to return data from the server using Meteor publish and subscribe.
The second is you are passing the key to find the data over the URL. This can be spoofed by other users for them to find that users data.
Lastly if you are doing a find on the user object, I assume you might be storing data there. This is generally bad practice. If you need to store user data with their profile, it's best to create a new collection and publish/subscribe what you need.

Why call collection.find in an Iron Router controller

I have built a small meteor app based on code generated by the excellent Meteor Kitchen project. This code works and renders the collection to the page, but there is one thing I am confused about.
A subset of the code is here:
router.js
this.route("articles", {path: "/articles", controller: "ArticlesController"});
ArticlesController
this.ArticlesController = RouteController.extend({
template: "Articles",
onBeforeAction: function() {
this.next();
},
action: function(){
if (this.isReady()) {
this.render();
} else {
this.render("loading");
}
},
isReady: function() {
var ready = true;
var subs = [ Meteor.subscribe('allArticles') ];
_.each(subs, function(sub) {
if(!sub.ready())
ready = false;
});
return ready;
},
data: function() {
return {
articles: Articles.find({})
};
}
});
server/pubs/articles.js
Meteor.publish('allArticles', function() {
return Articles.find({});
});
Meteor.publish('singleArticle', function(articleId) {
check(articleId, String);
return Articles.find({_id: articleId});
});
As I understand how this code is working, the following takes place:
(1) Collection is published via allArticles and singleArticle subscriptions
(2) ArticlesController subscribes to allArticles
(3) data function in the ArticlesController extracts the data (from the subscription?) to the articles array which is then exposed to the Blaze template.
Where I am confused:
Why do we need to do a Articles.find({}) in the data function? Where do we access the allArticles data ... it seems we are going back to the Articles collection directly and how is that possible if we have subscribed only to allArticles ?
While you don't show it, I'm assuming you have the following line in your code, defined somewhere that will execute it on both the server, and the client:
Articles = new Mongo.Collection('articles');
/*CollectionName = new Mongo.Collection('DBCollectionName');*/
Docs. When this is executed on the server a Collection is created, and assigned to the variable name Articles. 'articles' is the name used to store this collection in MongoDB.
When this is executed on the client, a mini mongo Collection is created. It initially will have no documents in it.
Next you have server only code:
Meteor.publish('allArticles', function() {
return Articles.find({});
});
Meteor.publish('singleArticle', function(articleId) {
check(articleId, String);
return Articles.find({_id: articleId});
});
Docs. This defines two publications, 'allArticles' and 'singleArticle'. These are not Collections themselves, but are rules that specify a set of data that the server will publish, and a client may subscribe to. While these two publications return data from the Server's Articles collection, publications can return data from one or more collections, or by directly using the underlying ddp protocol you can publish data that comes from another data source (not mongodb).
Next on the client you subscribe to a collection:
Meteor.subscribe('allArticles')
Docs. This call takes the name of a publication defined on the server ('allArticles'), and subscribes to it. The server then executes the publish function, and sends over ddp the set of data returned. This data is stored in the Client-side Mini Mongo Collection created above, and named Articles.
Also the server will monitor the Articles collection for changes, and if the resultset of the 'allArticles' publication changes, will send these changes as updates to the client.
So next you have the data function in your Controller (Client side).
data: function() {
return {
articles: Articles.find({})
};
}
Docs. This sets the data context for the render function.
The reason this calls Articles.find rather than allArticles.find is because allArticles is not a collection, but was instead the name of the publication the client used to request the server send data, that was stored in the clients mini mongo collection named Articles.
Where do we access the allArticles data ... it seems we are going back
to the Articles collection directly and how is that possible if we
have subscribed only to allArticles ?
You return this as part of your data object so that you can access it in your template. In your Articles template you can now use {{#each articles}} directly without a helper function because articles is part of your data context. You can also access the articles returned from your controllers data portion inside of your Articles template helpers by using this.articles.
Why do we need to do a Articles.find({}) in the data function?
These queries being performed in your controllers data function act on the clients minimongo Articles collection as opposed to the servers. Once the information is published from the server, and the client has subscribed to it, the client has this information available in their minimongo instance, but still needs to access it somehow. Basically, the publication makes the information available, but the Articles.find({}) accesses it for the client.
Accessing this information inside of the data function of your controller is simply to avoid doing it inside of your template.
I think that your misunderstanding comes from the third step that you have described:
data function in the ArticlesController extracts the data (from the
subscription?) to the articles array which is then exposed to the
Blaze template.
The data function extracts the data from minimongo on the client which contains the information from the subscription. Minimongo lies between the subscription and the data function.
I would need to know more about your app to answer the question. Are you viewing just a single article, or is there a page that lists them all?
If you are viewing a single article you would need to subscribe to the singleArticle publication.
If you were showing a list of articles, you would need to subscribe to allArticles. If there are a lot of articles, you could improve the speed of your app by limiting the number of fields with a query projection.

Refreshing page with meteor iron router

Here is the problem :
I am currently programming a chatapp based on what i found on github (https://github.com/sasikanth513/chatDemo)
I am refactoring it with iron-router.
When I go to the page (clicking on the link) I get an existing chatroom (that's what I want)
When I refresh the page (F5) I get a new created chatroom ! (what i want is getting the existing chatroom ...)
Here is the code in ironrouter :
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Session.get('currentId'); //id of the other person
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
You can find my github repo with the whole project : https://github.com/balibou/textr
Thanx a lot !
Your route data depends on Session variables which will be erased after a refresh. You have a few options but the easiest would be to put the room id directly into the route: '/chatroom/:_id'. Then you can use this.params._id to fetch the appropriate ChatRooms document. Note that you could still keep '/chatroom' for cases where the room doesn't exist, however you'd need to redirect to '/chatroom/:_id' after the insert.
In meteor, the Session object is empty when the client starts, and loading/refreshing the page via HTTP "restarts" the client. To deal with this issue, you could persist the user's correspondent id in a Meteor.user attribute, so that you could easily do:
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Meteor.user().profile.correspondentId;
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
This would work, with the proper permissions, but I would recommend not allowing the direct update of that value on the client (I don't know if you want users to be able to override their correspondentId). So if you want to secure this process, replace all that code with a server method call, where your updates are safer.
Another (and more common case) solution was given by David Weldon, if you don't mind having ids in your URL (and therefore not a single url)

Meteor: what is the right way to add custom settings object to users collection?

There are multiple examples on publish/subscribe but not clear on what is the best practice for storing custom data in the in-built "users" collection in Meteor (especially in the new possibility of template specific collections).
For example, I need to store user browse history - something that is accessible through Meteor.user().settings.history.lastvisited[]
The challenge is:
Is any special publish / subscribe required for the above? (the
reason being, I am assuming the users collection is already
published and available on client side - so do we need another?)
How to take care of edge cases where user is new and hence settings.history object may not be defined? Can we have a special publish that automatically takes care of creating an empty object if the settings is undefined? How to do it?
I did this :
// server side
Meteor.publish('userSettings', function (maxRows) {
if (this.userId) {
return Meteor.users.find({ _id: this.userId }, { fields: {'settings':1}});
}
this.ready();
});
//client side
Meteor.subscribe('userSettings');
But I do not see anyway how I can access the published "userSettings" object on the client side - what is missing ??
You can create a field and set it to false/'', on each user you create using the accountsOnCreateUser method.
Accounts.onCreateUser(function(options, user) {
//this function gets called each time a user has been created on the Meteor.user collection
if (options.profile)
user.settings = ''; //this is just and example.
return user;
})
Now the publish looks ok, but in order to get it work im always use a Tracker.autorun function.
Tracker.autorun(function(){
Meteor.subscribe('userSettings');
})
Why the autorun? well if you don't call the auto run here, the subscription get only called 1 time when the apps loads, and not when the user documents.
Take care of yours deny/allow permissions, check this meteor:common mistakes post on the Profile editing section
Also the subscribe function have a callback function. Meteor.subscribe(name, [arg1, arg2...], [callbacks]), so you can do something like this.
var myUserSubscription = Meteor.subscribe('userSettings',function(){
console.log("ok im here on the client side")
console.log("this user subscription is ready " + myUserSubscription.ready())
})
console.log("outside the subscription why not? " + myUserSubscription.ready();
About ready();
True if the server has marked the subscription as ready. A reactive
data source.

How to push data from server to all clients not using Collections?

I need to inform clients about changes on server side. In my case I am using different Collections on server and on client (more about it in this question: how would you build pinterest like page with meteor.js).
On the server I am getting new Products from external API. I would like to publish the number of new items to all clients that they could update their local variables needed for layout to work well.
How to do it?
It would be nice if I could publish/subscribe other kinds of data than Meteor.Collection. I found Meteor.deps, but what I understand it works only on client side.
To accomplish what you want you do need another collection - on the client. On the server, in a publish function, build a document from scratch assigning the current count of Products to an attribute. Using observe() and set, modify count when documents are added or removed from Products. Subscribe to the count "record set" on the client.
// Server
Meteor.publish('count', function () {
// Build a document from scratch
var self = this;
var uuid = Meteor.uuid();
var count = Products.find().count();
// Assign initial Products count to document attribute
self.set('count', uuid, {count: count});
// Observe Products for additions and removals
var handle = Products.find().observe({
added: function (doc, idx) {
count++;
self.set('counts', uuid, {count: count});
self.flush();
},
removed: function (doc, idx) {
count--;
self.set('counts', uuid, {count: count});
self.flush();
}
});
self.complete();
self.flush();
self.onStop(function () {
handle.stop();
});
});
// Client
Counts = new Meteor.Collection('count');
Meteor.subscribe('count');
console.log('Count: ' + Counts.findOne().count);
I must say the above solution showed me one way, but still, what if I need to publish to client data that are not connected with observe()? Or with any collection?
In my case I have i.e. 1000 products. To engage visitors I am "refreshig" the collection by updating the timestamp of random number of products, and displaying collection sorted by timestamp. Thank to this visitors have impression that something is happening.
My refresh method returns number of products (it is random). I need to pass that number to all clients. I did it, but using (I think) ugly workaround.
My refresh method sets Session.set('lastRandomNo', random). BTW: I didn't know that Session works on server side. refresh updates Products collection.
Then accoriding to above answer:
Meteor.publish 'refreshedProducts', ->
self = this
uuid = Meteor.uuid()
# create a new collection to pass ProductsMeta data
self.set('products_meta', uuid, { refreshedNo: 0 })
handle = Products.find().observe
changed: (newDocument, atIndex, oldDocument) ->
self.set('products_meta', uuid, { refreshedNo: Session.get('lastRandomNo') })
self.flush()
self.complete()
self.flush()
self.onStop ->
handle.stop()
and on client side:
ProductsMeta = new Meteor.Collection('products_meta')
# subscribe to server 'products_meta' collection that is generated by server
Meteor.subscribe('refreshedProducts')
ProductsMeta.find({}).observe
changed: (newDocument, atIndex, oldDocument) ->
# I have access to refreshedNo by
console.log ProductsMeta.findOne().refreshedNo
What do you think?

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