Console returning undefined - meteor

When I write this in console I get undefined however the data is in the database. What am I missing?
Meteor.users.findOne({_id: this.userId},{fields: {"profile.pastEmployer.name": 1}});

I think what you may want to do is this:
var pastEmployerName = Meteor.user().profile.pastEmployer.name;
Depending on how confident you are in the existence of those nested properties, you may want to use a guard like so:
var profile = Meteor.user().profile;
var pastEmployerName = profile && profile.pastEmployer && profile.pastEmployer.name;
Some things to note:
Use Meteor.userId() to get the current user's id, and Meteor.user() to the the current user's document. In publishers and methods, we use this.userId.
A fields projection (as used in your original question) gives you an object including an _id and the minimal structure to display the specified field(s). In your case, you'd expect to get an object with an _id and a profile, which in turn contains a pastEmployer and so on. In general, fields projections are beneficial on the server (they save on bandwidth and CPU), but are of limited use on the client because the complete documents are already in memory.

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Correctly updating the same object on create trigger in firebase realtime DB trigger

I have a firebase realtime database trigger on a create node. my need is to update a property based on some condition in the create trigger for the same object. The way i am doing currently is below:
exports.on_order_received_validate_doodle_cash_order = functions.database.ref("/orders/{id}")
.onCreate((change, context) => {
console.log("start of on_order_received_deduct_doodle_cash")
const orderId = context.params.id
const order = change.val();
var db = admin.database();
const orderRef = db.ref('orders/')
return orderRef.child(orderId).update({"_verifiedOrder": true})
})
As you can see i am getting order id from context and then querying object again and updating it. My question is do i need to do this circus or can i just update it without querying again?
Generally it looks good. Just some small feedback to make you feel more confident about being on the right track.
Call the parameter snapshot instead of change because the parameter name change only make sense for the onUpdate event trigger.
You do not need to log that you're entering the function. Because entering and leaving the function is automatically logged by Firebase also.
You can remove the order variable that is unused.
You are actually not "querying" the object again. Making a reference to a node in the database doesn't make any network call itself. Not until you subscribe to receiving data. So doing orderRef.child(orderId) is not a query, it's just a database reference.
You can use the snapshot's own reference attribute to shorten your code a bit... effectively throwing away almost all code :-)
So your code code look like this instead. It is doing the exact same thing, just shorter. It was also correct from the beginning.
exports.on_order_received_validate_doodle_cash_order = functions
.database
.ref("/orders/{id}")
.onCreate((snapshot) => {
return snapshot.ref.child("_verifiedOrder").set(true);
});
But as mentioned in my comment above, you are effectively just setting a flag that is confirming that data was saved (or rather: confirming that the function was triggered). You might want to add some logic in there to check whether the order can be placed or not and then set the verified flag to true or false depending on that. Because with the logic of the implementation, all orders will have the value _verifiedOrder set to true, which is a waste of storage in your database.

Firebase update on disconnect

I have a node on firebase that lists all the players in the game. This list will update as and when new players join. And when the current user ( me ) disconnects, I would like to remove myself from the list.
As the list will change over time, at the moment I disconnect, I would like to update this list and update firebase.
This is the way I am thinking of doing it, but it doesn't work as .update doesnt accept a function. Only the object. But if I create the object beforehand, when .onDisconnect calls, it will not be the latest object... How should I go about doing this?
payload.onDisconnect().update( () => {
const withoutMe = state.roomObj
const index = withoutMe.players.indexOf( state.userObj.name )
if ( index > -1 ) {
withoutMe.players.splice( index, 1 )
}
return withoutMe
})
The onDisconnect handler was made for this use-case. But it requires that the data of the write operation is known at the time that you set the onDisconnect. If you think about it, this should make sense: since the onDisconnect happens after your client is disconnected, the data of the data of that write operation must be known before the disconnect.
It sounds like you're building a so-called presence system: a list that contains a node for each user that is currently online. The Firebase documentation has an example of such a presence system. The key difference from your approach is that it in the documentation each user only modifies their own node.
So: when the user comes online, they write a node for themselves. And then when they get disconnected, that node gets removed. Since all users write their node under the same parent, that parent will reflect the users that are online.
The actual implementation is a bit more involved since it deals with some edge cases too. So I recommend you check out the code in the documentation I linked, and use that as the basis for your own similar system.

Meteor parameters and where they come from

I have a question where all the parameters for the meteor functions are coming from? Things like postAttribues, id, postId, limit, etc, etc...
Meteor.publish('newPosts', function(limit) {
return Posts.find({}, {sort: {submitted: -1}, limit: limit});
});
Meteor.publish('singlePost', function(id) {
return id && Posts.find(id);
});
//related to post
Meteor.publish('comments', function(postId) {
return Comments.find({postId: postId});
});
Are they signaled from Mongo DB? It's fine and dandy to memorize these things, but it would be nice to know where these parameters are coming from and what parameters are usually available to me.
I never used any frameworks before, so this may be why I'm confused. I worked exclusively with Javascript before jumping on Meteor.
I also have the same question about Iron Router: When creating a route, we can set a route with a specific Id with /randomName/:_id and the unique code that's responsible for associating the ":_Id" with the actual page is this.params._id. Why and how does the back end associate these things?
I would appreciate any help to help me understand this better.
A meteor find() query follows the syntax find({query}, {options}) defined here: http://docs.meteor.com/#/full/find where the options parameter is an object containing sort, limit, etc... These options look similar to some Mongo operators such as .sort() and .limit() but are defined
The parameters limit and sort are part of the options parameter. It would be useful to review the documentation for Meteor found here: https://docs.mongodb.org/manual/
The parameter postId comes from the way you have defined your objects in your DB. This field is part of your query parameter which specifies what exactly to find in the DB. So by specifying a postId:, Meteor will look through your Comments collection for any containing the postId that you pass. When you pass a string as the query parameter, it is expected that that string is an _id in your collection.
For the parameters being passed into the publication itself see docs.meteor.com/#/full/meteor_subscribe . It comes from the subscription. Basically, you can pass. Parameters between the client and the server this way. To make your publication more robust, you can add parameters as you wish so that the client can specify which 'id' or 'limit' that they want.
As for your iron:router question, I am not sure exactly what you are asking about how the backend associates parameters and the page itself. Perhaps you could be more specific and update your question accordingly

Firebase / AngularFire limited object deletes its properties on $save()

I have a primary node in my database called 'questions', when I create a ref to that node and bring it into my project as a $asObject(), I can modify the individual questions and $save() the collection without any problems, however as soon as I try to limit the object, by priority, the $save() deletes everything off of the object!
this works fine:
db.questions = $firebase(fb.questions).$asObject();
// later :
db.questions.$save();
// db.questions is an object with many 'questions', which I can edit and resave as I please
but as soon as I switch my code to this:
db.questions = $firebase(fb.questions.startAt(auth.user.id).endAt(auth.user.id)).$asObject();
// later :
db.questions.$save();
// db.questions is an empty firebase object without any 'questions!'
Is there some limitation to limited objects (pun not intended) and their ability to be changed and saved?? The saving actually saves updates to the questions to the database, but somehow nukes the local $firebase object...
First line of synchronized arrays ($asArray) documentation:
Synchronized arrays should be used for any list of objects that will be sorted, iterated, and which have unique ids.
First line of synchronized objects ($asObject) documentation:
Objects are useful for storing key/value pairs, and singular records that are not used as a collection.
As demonstrated, if you are going to work with a collection and employ limit, it would behoove you to use a tool designed for collections (i.e. $asArray).
If you were to recreate the behavior of $save using the Firebase SDK, it would look like this:
var ref = new Firebase(URL).limit(10);
// ref.set(data); // throws an error!
ref.ref().set(data); // replaces the entire path; same as $save
Thus, the behavior here exactly matches the SDK. You cannot, technically, call set() on a query instance and this doesn't make any sense, really. What does limit(10) mean to a JSON object? If you call set, which 10 unordered keys should be set? There is no correlation here and limit() really only makes sense with a collection of data, not a list of key/value pairs.
Hope that helps.

Is there a way to tell meteor a collection is static (will never change)?

On my meteor project users can post events and they have to choose (via an autocomplete) in which city it will take place. I have a full list of french cities and it will never be updated.
I want to use a collection and publish-subscribes based on the input of the autocomplete because I don't want the client to download the full database (5MB). Is there a way, for performance, to tell meteor that this collection is "static"? Or does it make no difference?
Could anyone suggest a different approach?
When you "want to tell the server that a collection is static", I am aware of two potential optimizations:
Don't observe the database using a live query because the data will never change
Don't store the results of this query in the merge box because it doesn't need to be tracked and compared with other data (saving memory and CPU)
(1) is something you can do rather easily by constructing your own publish cursor. However, if any client is observing the same query, I believe Meteor will (at least in the future) optimize for that so it's still just one live query for any number of clients. As for (2), I am not aware of any straightforward way to do this because it could potentially mess up the data merging over multiple publications and subscriptions.
To avoid using a live query, you can manually add data to the publish function instead of returning a cursor, which causes the .observe() function to be called to hook up data to the subscription. Here's a simple example:
Meteor.publish(function() {
var sub = this;
var args = {}; // what you're find()ing
Foo.find(args).forEach(function(document) {
sub.added("client_collection_name", document._id, document);
});
sub.ready();
});
This will cause the data to be added to client_collection_name on the client side, which could have the same name as the collection referenced by Foo, or something different. Be aware that you can do many other things with publications (also, see the link above.)
UPDATE: To resolve issues from (2), which can be potentially very problematic depending on the size of the collection, it's necessary to bypass Meteor altogether. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/21835534/586086 for one way to do it. Another way is to just return the collection fetch()ed as a method call, although this doesn't have the benefits of compression.
From Meteor doc :
"Any change to the collection that changes the documents in a cursor will trigger a recomputation. To disable this behavior, pass {reactive: false} as an option to find."
I think this simple option is the best answer
You don't need to publish your whole collection.
1.Show autocomplete options only after user has inputted first 3 letters - this will narrow your search significantly.
2.Provide no more than 5-10 cities as options - this will keep your recordset really small - thus no need to push 5mb of data to each user.
Your publication should look like this:
Meteor.publish('pub-name', function(userInput){
var firstLetters = new RegExp('^' + userInput);
return Cities.find({name:firstLetters},{limit:10,sort:{name:1}});
});

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