meteor database insert in global collection - meteor

Question

The code below should insert the selected item value in the Tasks collection, retain the info for later use, and a headerLabel should show the task selected. I am not able to get the headerLabel to show the task when the click .menuItem function runs. Thanks
Tasks = new Mongo.Collection('tasks');
Template.mainMenu.events({
'click .menuItem': function(event){
Tasks.insert({menuItem: $(event.currentTarget).data('value')});
}
});
Template.header.helpers({
headerLabel: function( id ){
return Tasks.findOne({_id: id}).menuItem;
},
tasks: function(){
return Tasks.find();
}
});
<template name="mainMenu">
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<section class="col-xs-12">
<div class="list-group">
{{#each menuItems}}
<a href="#" class="list-group-item menuItem" data-value={{menuItem}}>
<img src="/abc.png">
{{menuItem}} <span class="badge">></span>
</a>
{{/each}}
</div>
</section>
</div>
<template name="header">
<h1><button class="col-xs-2 mainMenu" type="button">☰</button></h1>
<h3>
<label class="col-xs-8 text-center">
{{#if headerLabel}} {{headerLabel}} {{else}} Select an item {{/if}}
</label>
</h3>
<h1><button class="col-xs-2" type="button">⋮</button></h1>
</template>

Answer 1

Assuming that the click can happen multiple times, you'll need to pass an _id for the appropriate task into your helper:
Tasks = new Mongo.Collection('tasks');
Template.mainMenu.events({
'click .menuItem': function(event){
Tasks.insert({menuItem: $(event.currentTarget).data('value')});
}
});
Template.header.helpers({
headerLabel: function( id ){
var task = Tasks.findOne({_id: id});
if( task ) {
return task.menuItem;
}
},
tasks: function() {
return Tasks.find();
}
});
So what I'm doing there is saying find one task's menuItem that has the ID passed to the helper. I also added a tasks helper to get all tasks. So your template might look something like:
<template name="mainMenu">
{{#each task in tasks}}
<h4>{{headerLabel task._id}}</h4>
<!-- Additional code here... -->
{{/each}}
</template>
You'll obviously need to customize the HTML to your specific situation, but that should give you the gist. Hope that helps!