I have got problem accessing the user profile details of the users other then the current user.
The goal is to display a little footer under a each of the posts in the kind of blog entries list . Footer should consist of the post and author details (like date, username etc.).
Blog entry is identified by authors' _id but the point is that I can not access
Meteor.users.find({_id : authorId});
Resulting cursor seems to be the same as Meteor.user (not 'users') and consists of one only document, and is valid for the current user ID only. For others, like authors ID, I can only get an empty collection.
The question is, if is there any way, other then next Meteor.users subscription to get authors profile (like username profile.nick etc) ???
Update: You can Publish Composite package if you want to get blog entry and user details in a single subscription. See the following sample code and edit as per your collection schemas,
Meteor.publishComposite('blogEntries', function (blogEntryIds) {
return [{
find: function() {
return BlogEntries.find({ courseId: { $in: blogEntryIds }});
// you can also do -> return BlogEntries.find();
// or -> return BlogEntries.find({ courseId: blogEntryId });
},
children: [{
find: function(blogEntry) {
return Meteor.users.find({
id: blogEntry.authorId
}, {
fields: {
"profile": 1,
"emails": 1
}
});
}
}}
}]
});
End of update
You need to publish Meteor.users from the server to be able to use it on client. accounts package will publish current user, that's why you are only seeing current user's information.
In a file in server folder or in Meteor.isServer if block do something like this
//authorIds = ["authorId1", "authorId2];
Meteor.publish('authors', function (authorIds) {
return Meteor.users.find({ _id : { $in: authorIds }});
});
or
Meteor.publish('author', function (authorId) {
return Meteor.users.find({ _id : authorId });
});
Then on client side subscribe to this publication, in template's onCreated function, with something like this
Meteor.subscribe('author', authorId); //or Meteor.subscribe('author', authorIds);
or
template.subscribe('author', authorId); //or template.subscribe('author', authorIds);
If you want to show only username (or a few other fields), you can save them in post document along with authorId. For example:
post:{
...
authorId: someValue,
authorName: someValue
}
You can use them in your templates as a field of a post.
If you have too many fields which you do not want to embed in post document, (so you want to keep only authorId), you can use publish-composite when you make your posts publication. (See example 1)
You do not need to publish all your users and their profiles.
Related
My site allows users to apply by connecting their google account, as soon as an account is created they're given a "pending" role (using alanning:roles package). I would like to have a table for admins to see when new applicants have applied, from there the admin can properly manage the users application (change role to accepted, declined, etc.). So, I have created my table, but it's showing all users, I'm wondering if someone knows a way to make it so only users with the "pending" role are shown in my table?
Here is what I have so far:
TabularTables.ManageApplications = new Tabular.Table({
name: 'ManageApplications',
collection: Meteor.users,
allow: function (userId) {
return Roles.userIsInRole(userId, 'admin');
},
autoWidth: false,
oLanguage: {
"sSearch": "Search: "
},
columns: [
{ data: //column details here },
{ data: //column details here },
{ data: //column details here },
{ data: //column details here },
{ data: //column details here },
],
});
This works, but it shows every user (not just users with the "pending" role).
I then created this to try and publish only data for pending users:
Meteor.publish("pendingUsers", function() {
var isAdmin = Roles.userIsInRole(this.userId, 'admin');
if (isAdmin) {
return Roles.getUsersInRole('pending').fetch();
} else {
return null;
}
});
and subscribed by adding pub: "pendingUsers", to my table. This somewhat works, it makes it so it only shows data in the columns for "pending" role users, but, it still lists every user and just has blank spaces where the data would be.
If anyone knows how I can achieve this it would be greatly appreciated if you could give some insight as I've been stuck on this for quite a while... I believe it may have to do with "Displaying Only Part of a Collection's Data Set" in the Tabular readme, but I'm very unsure of how to set this up. Any examples or help is extremely appreciated.
This has been solved by adding the following to my table:
selector: function(userId) {
return {
_id: {$in: Roles.getUsersInRole('pending')
.map(function(user){ return user._id} ) }
}
},
Given the way that publications work it's more than likely that you have another publication and subscription which is giving you the rest of the users but with a different set of keys/fields. Since multiple publications can be running on the same collection at the same time you want to perform the same .find() on the client that your publication is giving you.
Go ahead and add a selector to your table definition as follows:
selector: function( userId ) {
return Roles.getUsersInRole('pending');
}
You don't need the .fetch() in your publication btw, Roles.getUsersInRole() already returns a cursor of Meteor.users.
Use Selector: https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-tabular#modifying-the-selector
If you want to check all the rules of such a group:
selector: function (userId) {
return 'roles.myrole': {$exists: true}};
},
Or with just a few:
selector: function (userId) {
return 'roles.myrole': {$in: ['viewer', 'editor']}};
},
I have a simple todo schema: (just a sample to draw my question)
{
title: {
type: string
},
value: {
type: string
},
author: {
type: object
},
"author._id": {
type: string
},
"author.firstName": {
type: string
},
"author.lastName": {
type: string
},
}
The author entries are from meteor.user. If the meteor user changes the firstName or lastName i have to update the todo. I have two possibilities:
observerChanges (server side) to users collection and update all todos from this user with the new firstname/lastname
if i call the user update method i can call a method to update all todos
when it's better to use cursor.observeChanges and when it's better to call a update method manual? And why?
As the comment says, you should not store the author name / email in the document if it is mutable:
Store the ID of the user only in the document, the UserID is immutable.
When building your ToDo template, look up the User information by ID: you would need to publish a Publication for user by Id, and subscribe to it on the client with the userId as parameter.
Meteor.publish('userById', function(userId) {
return Meteor.users.find({_id: userId}, {limit:1});
});
in your route / template.onCreated depending on your Router, assuming the document is called doc
this.subscribe('userById', this.doc.author._id);
in the template helper
Template.todoTemplate.helpers({
'Author': function() {
return Meteor.users.findOne({_id: this.doc.author._id});
}
});
and call the Author info in the template
<Template name="todoTemplate">
First Name: {{Author.first_name}}
Last Name: {{Author.last_name}}
</Template>
I think you shouldn't rely on the second method, because sometimes you (or your teammate) might forget to update it. Moreover, if you're denormalizing user data in other collections, users knowing Meteor might just call your Meteor.method or manipulate db from the browser console...
You can use this package:
meteor add matb33:collection-hooks
It adds some hooks to your mongo insert/update/remove call
For example:
Meteor.users.after.update(function (userId, doc, fieldNames, modifier, options) {
if (this.previous.firstName === doc.firstName && this.previous.lastName === doc.lastName) {
return;
}
Todos.update({'author._id': doc._id}, {
$set: {
'author.firstName': doc.firstName,
'author.lastName': doc.lastName,
}
})
}, {fetchPrevious: true})
(To update the Todos collection efficiently, make sure to add index to author field)
This is just a handier way than writing your own observeChanges, and better than manually updating Todos collection every time you update the users collection, because you might forgot to call it in some case, or some hacker user just calls Meteor.users.update(Meteor.userId(), {...}) perhaps...
But still, I think you should always add some auto-correct mechanism to avoid wrong data being displayed, because no matter which method you choose, some error will occur (maybe the server watching the db just crashes right after users update). You can check on the client side when displaying content, if author.firstName doesn't match Meteor.users.findOne(author._id) (but you have to publish the user though...), than call a method to tell the server to update it.
How to do cascaded delete, update and reactive update in existing joined documents? Say for example I join Posts collection with Meteor.users collection with userId() as author. I could do transform function on the Posts collection to get user data of the author, like username and display username of the author on any post. The problem is when user changes his/her username, existing posts won't update author's username reactively. And when you delete parent document child documents are still there. I used popular smart packages like publish-composite and collection-helpers but problem still exists. Any expert meteor dev can help me on this? Thank you.
If you want to use collection-hooks to solve this problem, the following pseudo code should get you going:
// run only on the server where we have access to the complete dataset
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.users.after.update(function (userId, doc, fieldNames, modifier, options) {
var oldUsername = this.previous.username;
var newUsername = doc.username;
// don't bother running this hook if username has not changed
if (oldUsername !== newUsername) {
Posts.update({
// find the user and make sure you don't overselect those that have already been updated
author: userId,
authorUsername: oldUsername
}, {$set: {
// set the new username
authorUsername: newUsername
}}, {
// update all documents that match
multi: true
})
}
}, {fetchPrevious: true});
}
I have a game built on Meteor framework. One game document is something like this:
{
...
participants : [
{
"name":"a",
"character":"fighter",
"weapon" : "sword"
},
{
"name":"b",
"character":"wizard",
"weapon" : "book"
},
...
],
...
}
I want Fighter character not to see the character of the "b" user. (and b character not to see the a's) There are about 10 fields like character and weapon and their value can change during the game so as the restrictions.
Right now I am using Session variables not to display that information. However, it is not a very safe idea. How can I subscribe/publish documents according to the values based on characters?
There are 2 possible solutions that come to mind:
1. Publishing all combinations for different field values and subscribing according to the current state of the user. However, I am using Iron Router's waitOn feature to load subscriptions before rendering the page. So I am not very confident that I can change subscriptions during the game. Also because it is a time-sensitive game, I guess changing subscriptions would take time during the game and corrupt the game pleasure.
My problem right now is the user typing
Collection.find({})
to the console and see fields of other users. If I change my collection name into something difficult to find, can somebody discover the collection name? I could not find a command to find collections on the client side.
The way this is usually solved in Meteor is by using two publications. If your game state is represented by a single document you may have problem implementing this easily, so for the sake of an example I will temporarily assume that you have a Participants collection in which you're storing the corresponding data.
So anyway, you should have one subscription with data available to all the players, e.g.
Meteor.publish('players', function (gameId) {
return Participants.find({ gameId: gameId }, { fields: {
// exclude the "character" field from the result
character: 0
}});
});
and another subscription for private player data:
Meteor.publish('myPrivateData', function (gameId) {
// NOTE: not excluding anything, because we are only
// publishing a single document here, whose owner
// is the current user ...
return Participants.find({
userId: this.userId,
gameId: gameId,
});
});
Now, on the client side, the only thing you need to do is subscribe to both datasets, so:
Meteor.subscribe('players', myGameId);
Meteor.subscribe('myPrivateData', myGameId);
Meteor will be clever enough to merge the incoming data into a single Participants collection, in which other players' documents will not contain the character field.
EDIT
If your fields visibility is going to change dynamically I suggest the following approach:
put all the restricted properties in a separated collection that tracks exactly who can view which field
on client side use observe to integrate that collection into your local player representation for easier access to the data
Data model
For example, the collection may look like this:
PlayerProperties = new Mongo.Collection('playerProperties');
/* schema:
userId : String
gameId : String
key : String
value : *
whoCanSee : [String]
*/
Publishing data
First you will need to expose own properties to each player
Meteor.publish('myProperties', function (gameId) {
return PlayerProperties.find({
userId: this.userId,
gameId: gameId
});
});
then the other players properties:
Meteor.publish('otherPlayersProperties', function (gameId) {
if (!this.userId) return [];
return PlayerProperties.find({
gameId: gameId,
whoCanSee: this.userId,
});
});
Now the only thing you need to do during the game is to make sure you add corresponding userId to the whoCanSee array as soon as the user gets ability to see that property.
Improvements
In order to keep your data in order I suggest having a client-side-only collection, e.g. IntegratedPlayerData, which you can use to arrange the player properties into some manageable structure:
var IntegratedPlayerData = new Mongo.Collection(null);
var cache = {};
PlayerProperties.find().observe({
added: function (doc) {
IntegratedPlayerData.upsert({ _id : doc.userId }, {
$set: _.object([ doc.key ], [ doc.value ])
});
},
changed: function (doc) {
IntegratedPlayerData.update({ _id : doc.userId }, {
$set: _.object([ doc.key ], [ doc.value ])
});
},
removed: function (doc) {
IntegratedPlayerData.update({ _id : doc.userId }, {
$unset: _.object([ doc.key ], [ true ])
});
}
});
This data "integration" is only a draft and can be refined in many different ways. It could potentially be done on server-side with a custom publish method.
I have a set of users defined like this:
Accounts.createUser({
username:'Simon',
email:'simon#email.com',
profile:{
firstname:'Simon',
lastname:'Surname',
location:'Home Address',
privacy: {
location:0,
emails:0 } //Location and emails are private and should not be disclosed
}
});
My question is how can I publish this user's record for other users to view, taking into account the profile privacy settings. In this example, I have set the privacy for location and emails to zero with the intention that this information is not published for this user.
I would like to publish it using the standard method:
Meteor.publish("usersWithPublicEmails", function () {
return Meteor.users.find();
});
But I cannot see a way to specify the selector or fields in such a way that only public information will be published.
I have tried adding additional publications of the form:
Meteor.publish("allUsers", function () {
return Meteor.users.find( {}, {fields:{username:1}} );
});
Meteor.publish("usersWithPublicEmails", function () {
return Meteor.users.find( {"profile.privacy.emails":1}, {fields:{username:1, emails:1}} );
});
but the selector does not seem to be returning the emails as I expected. I am looking for optimal way to do this from a performance point of view.
Mongodb is not a relational database so whenever I want to join or query based on metadata I remember I have to do things differently. In your case I would make a separate Collection for user privacy if I wanted to query on user privacy. In addition, if I cared about performance I probably would never want "all of x", I would just want enough to show the user, thus paginate. With these two ideas in mind you can easily get what you want: query based on privacy settings and performance.
Privacy = new Mongo.Collection("privacy");
Whenever we want to add privacy to an account:
Privacy.insert({
emails: 1,
userId: account._id,
});
Then later, one page at a time, showing ten results each page, tracking with currentPage:
Meteor.publish("usersWithPublicEmails function (currentPage) {
var results = []
var privacyResults = Privacy.find({"emails":1}, {skip: currentPage,
limit: 10});
var result;
while (privacyResults.hasNext() ) {
result = privacyResult.next();
results.append(Meteor.users.find({_id: result.userId});
}
return result;
});
I didn't test this code, it may have errors, but it should give you the general idea. The drawback here is that you have to keep privacy and users in sync, but these are the kinds of problems you run into when you're not using a relational database.
Mongodb has a way to do this kind of reference lookup with less code, but it still happens on demand and I prefer the flexibility of doing it myself. If you're interested take a look at Database references
That's because you have a typo in your publish function's fields object, instead of email you've typed emails
So the correct function would be:
Meteor.publish("usersWithPublicEmails", function () {
return Meteor.users.find( {"profile.privacy.emails":1}, {fields:{username:1, email:1}} );
});
Furthermore, you're already publishing all usernames in your allUsers publication, therefore, in order to add the missing data for relevant public users, you'll just need this:
Meteor.publish("usersWithPublicEmails", function () {
return Meteor.users.find( {"profile.privacy.emails":1}, {fields:{email:1}} );
});
and Meteor will automatically merge those records for you.
A simple solution in the end. I had missed the additional subscription in my router:
Router.route('/users', {
name: 'userList',
waitOn: function(){
return Meteor.subscribe('allUsers') &&
Meteor.subscribe('usersWithPublicEmails');
},
data: function(){
return Meteor.users.find();
}
});
A basic mistake:-(