Synchronizing data across collections in meteor - meteor

Question

I am using meteor to keep track of a person's progress as they progress through quiz questions. I want to return a random question from quizzes that matches the current question they are on. My trouble is that I have two methods, one creates a document to keep track of their progress through the whole quiz, and another creates a document to keep track of a particular question as well as documents that match back to the answers. I need to have the "questionId" set in one method call equal the "currentQuestionId" in the other.
My problem is that in trying to synchronize the currentquestionId in my responseToLectures, with the question that it actually picks, does not quite work in my current code because the methods are asynchronous, but I am calling them in a synchronous manner. Could I get help for how to refactor this code to be more meteor-like? The funny thing I notice is that if I put console.logs in the inner most "if" block, I will see that they get called >5 times before the page loads, I guess that I expect that as soon as it gets returned, that it would stop running the block and the next time that it gets loaded, it would just return the right question immediately. Thanks!
Question: function(){
var responsesToLectures = ResponsesToLectures.findOne({});
if (responsesToLectures != null){
if(responsesToLectures.currentProblemId == null){
var questionCount = Questions.find({level: responsesToLectures.currentLevel}).count();
if(questionCount != null){
var randomNumber = Math.floor((Math.random() * questionCount));
var randomQuestion = Questions.findOne({level: responsesToLectures.currentLevel}, {skip: randomNumber});
if (randomQuestion != null) {
Meteor.call('setRandomQuestion', randomQuestion._id, randomQuestion.lectureId);
return randomQuestion;
}
}
} else {
return Questions.findOne({_id : responsesToLectures.currentProblemId});
}
}
},
The issue is that the Question.findOne which gets returned from this a different id from the one which I set using 'setRandom' question. What is the proper way to retrieve values from documents in collections so that I can shuttle them into documents from other collections?
This is the mongo db to show you what I mean:
meteor:PRIMARY> db.responses.find();
{ "_id" : "zTTF7GrnuRqT4JNck", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "questionId" : "ZSYJXn59ykA9QrTv6", "answerId" : "yHQzekpge486CwqLJ" }
{ "_id" : "47d2hhw7okLq2SXhm", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "questionId" : "ZSYJXn59ykA9QrTv6", "answerId" : "WyyKfxzbinjxgrujd"}
{ "_id" : "ZqQu3TDcdMeo2SFBR", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "questionId" : "ZSYJXn59ykA9QrTv6", "answerId" : "MES2Aj8PTNzMmthyh"}
{ "_id" : "dHtyKSxDccXvBTjnD", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "questionId" : "ZSYJXn59ykA9QrTv6", "answerId" : "tPcCSjS8qhL7oebWZ" }
meteor:PRIMARY> db.responsesToLectures.find();
{ "_id" : "TohrY5tHK2DJ2ngWb", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "lectureId" : "pZKuD2LnBh73wPTtN", "currentLevel" : 1, "currentQuestionId" : "FZBQu5wQq2bA2e6SB" }
meteor:PRIMARY> db.scores.find();
{ "_id" : "9HhC8CBG4JJTxcR8m", "userId" : "hneHgetL9oYaL2iWA", "questionId" : "ZSYJXn59ykA9QrTv6" }

Answer 1

For those who encounter this type of issue in the future, I was able to use collection hooks to synchronize the Ids across multiple collections. This worked for me!
ResponsesToLectures.before.insert(function(userId, doc){
var questionCount = Questions.find({level: doc.currentLevel}).count();
if(questionCount != null){
var randomNumber = Math.floor((Math.random() * questionCount));
var randomQuestion = Questions.findOne({level: doc.currentLevel}, {skip: randomNumber});
if (randomQuestion != null) {
doc.currentQuestionId = randomQuestion._id;
}
}
});