Meteor call scope variable won't be set - meteor

Question

I'm having quite a bit of trouble with the scope of the Meteor.call procedure. It won't set my scope variable to the result.length
'takeaways': function (userId) {
var len = 0;
Meteor.call('userTakeaways', userId, function (error, result) {
if (error) {
console.log('there was an error finding the number of messages that were takeaways')
} else {
len = result.length; // result.length is 2
}
});
console.log(len); // still 0
return len;
}
Please help!
Thank you :)

Answer 1

len is not a reactive variable. So if the len value changes, it won't update the spacebar value.
So here two approach to solving this problem:
1. using reactive var/session.
//Make sure you have install reactive var package
var len = new ReactiveVar(0);
Template['name'].helpers({
'takeaways': function (userId) {
Meteor.call('userTakeaways', userId, function (error, result) {
if (error) {
console.log('there was an error finding the number of messages that were takeaways')
} else {
len.set(result.length); // result.length is 2
}
});
console.log(len.get()); // You will get 2 when response come from you method call.
return len.get();
}
});
2. Using 'simple:reactive-method' package
takeaways : function(userId){
return ReactiveMethod.call('userTakeaways', userId).length;
}

Answer 2

try adding in the else statement
return len = result.length;
as you can see bellow.
'takeaways': function (userId) {
var len = 0;
Meteor.call('userTakeaways', userId, function (error, result) {
if (error) {
console.log('there was an error finding the number of messages that were takeaways')
} else {
return len = result.length; // result.length is 2
}
});
console.log(len); // still 0
return len;
}