I want to broadcast NON-MONGO-DB data from a server publisher to client collections. Currently I save all registered subscriber handles to use those for posting the data
client.js:
col = new Meteor.Collection("data")
Meteor.subscribe("stream")
On server side it looks like
server.js
all_handles = [];
Meteor.publish("stream", function() {
// safe reference to this sessions
var self = this;
// save reference to this subscriber
all_handles.push(self);
// signal ready
self.ready();
// on stop subscription remove this handle from list
self.onStop(function() {
all_handles = _.without(all_handles, self);
}
}
Then I can use the all_handles somewhere in my app to send data to those clients, like:
function broadcast(msg) {
all_handles.forEach(function(handle) {
handle.added("data", Random.id(), msg);
}
}
This is already in use and running.
Q: What I am looking for is: Can I get all handles from currently already existing meteor (internal) objects like _sessions or something else?
It would be great if I had not to organize the subscribers handle all the time by myself.
Please do not answer with links to other broadcast packages like streamy or else. I want to continue with standard collections but with as less code as possible.
Thanks for help and feedback
Tom
Maybe this might work for you: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30814101/2005564
You could get the connections via var connections = Meteor.server.stream_server.open_sockets; but as looshi said this might break with a future meteor update as it is not part of the public API...
As informed by #laberning I used for now the "undocumented" meteor connections.
You can post to all subscribers of a publishing method like:
// publish updated values to all subscribers
function publish_to_all_subscribers(subscription_name, id, data) {
_.each(Meteor.server.stream_server.open_sockets, function(connection) {
_.each(connection._meteorSession._namedSubs, function(sub) {
if (sub._name == subscription_name) {
sub.insert(subscription_name, id, data);
}
})
});
}
// create stream publisher
Meteor.publish('stream', function(){
// set ready
this.ready();
});
...
// use publishing somewhere in your app
publish_to_all_subscribers('stream', Random.id(), {msg: "Hello to all"});
...
updated: See an example MeteorPad for Publish and Subscribe and Broadcast messages
Related
Let's say that two users do changes to the same document while offline, but in different sections of the document. If user 2 goes back online after user 1, will the changes made by user 1 be lost?
In my database, each row contains a JS object, and one property of this object is an array. This array is bound to a series of check-boxes on the interface. What I would like is that if two users do changes to those check-boxes, the latest change is kept for each check-box individually, based on the time the when the change was made, not the time when the syncing occurred. Is GroundDB the appropriate tool to achieve this? Is there any mean to add an event handler in which I can add some logic that would be triggered when syncing occurs, and that would take care of the merging ?
The short answer is "yes" none of the ground db versions have conflict resolution since the logic is custom depending on the behaviour of conflict resolution eg. if you want to automate or involve the user.
The old Ground DB simply relied on Meteor's conflict resolution (latest data to the server wins) I'm guessing you can see some issues with that depending on the order of when which client comes online.
Ground db II doesn't have method resume it's more or less just a way to cache data offline. It's observing on an observable source.
I guess you could create a middleware observer for GDB II - one that checks the local data before doing the update and update the client or/and call the server to update the server data. This way you would have a way to handle conflicts.
I think to remember writing some code that supported "deletedAt"/"updatedAt" for some types of conflict handling, but again a conflict handler should be custom for the most part. (opening the door for reusable conflict handlers might be useful)
Especially knowing when data is removed can be tricky if you don't "soft" delete via something like using a "deletedAt" entity.
The "rc" branch is currently grounddb-caching-2016 version "2.0.0-rc.4",
I was thinking about something like:
(mind it's not tested, written directly in SO)
// Create the grounded collection
foo = new Ground.Collection('test');
// Make it observe a source (it's aware of createdAt/updatedAt and
// removedAt entities)
foo.observeSource(bar.find());
bar.find() returns a cursor with a function observe our middleware should do the same. Let's create a createMiddleWare helper for it:
function createMiddleWare(source, middleware) {
const cursor = (typeof (source||{}).observe === 'function') ? source : source.find();
return {
observe: function(observerHandle) {
const sourceObserverHandle = cursor.observe({
added: doc => {
middleware.added.call(observerHandle, doc);
},
updated: (doc, oldDoc) => {
middleware.updated.call(observerHandle, doc, oldDoc);
},
removed: doc => {
middleware.removed.call(observerHandle, doc);
},
});
// Return stop handle
return sourceObserverHandle;
}
};
}
Usage:
foo = new Ground.Collection('test');
foo.observeSource(createMiddleware(bar.find(), {
added: function(doc) {
// just pass it through
this.added(doc);
},
updated: function(doc, oldDoc) {
const fooDoc = foo.findOne(doc._id);
// Example of a simple conflict handler:
if (fooDoc && doc.updatedAt < fooDoc.updatedAt) {
// Seems like the foo doc is newer? lets update the server...
// (we'll just use the regular bar, since thats the meteor
// collection and foo is the grounded data
bar.update(doc._id, fooDoc);
} else {
// pass through
this.updated(doc, oldDoc);
}
},
removed: function(doc) {
// again just pass through for now
this.removed(doc);
}
}));
Here is the problem :
I am currently programming a chatapp based on what i found on github (https://github.com/sasikanth513/chatDemo)
I am refactoring it with iron-router.
When I go to the page (clicking on the link) I get an existing chatroom (that's what I want)
When I refresh the page (F5) I get a new created chatroom ! (what i want is getting the existing chatroom ...)
Here is the code in ironrouter :
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Session.get('currentId'); //id of the other person
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
You can find my github repo with the whole project : https://github.com/balibou/textr
Thanx a lot !
Your route data depends on Session variables which will be erased after a refresh. You have a few options but the easiest would be to put the room id directly into the route: '/chatroom/:_id'. Then you can use this.params._id to fetch the appropriate ChatRooms document. Note that you could still keep '/chatroom' for cases where the room doesn't exist, however you'd need to redirect to '/chatroom/:_id' after the insert.
In meteor, the Session object is empty when the client starts, and loading/refreshing the page via HTTP "restarts" the client. To deal with this issue, you could persist the user's correspondent id in a Meteor.user attribute, so that you could easily do:
Router.route('/chatroom', {
name: 'chatroom',
data: function() {
var currentId = Meteor.user().profile.correspondentId;
var res=ChatRooms.findOne({chatIds:{$all:[currentId,Meteor.userId()]}});
console.log(res);
if(res){
Session.set("roomid",res._id);
}
else{
var newRoom= ChatRooms.insert({chatIds:[currentId, Meteor.userId()],messages:[]});
Session.set('roomid',newRoom);
}
}
});
This would work, with the proper permissions, but I would recommend not allowing the direct update of that value on the client (I don't know if you want users to be able to override their correspondentId). So if you want to secure this process, replace all that code with a server method call, where your updates are safer.
Another (and more common case) solution was given by David Weldon, if you don't mind having ids in your URL (and therefore not a single url)
I am seeing a repeatable issue where a user authenticates ("logs in") with a Meteor server, and then a client subscription that depends on userId is updated (and dependent UI templates reactively update) before Meteor.userId() registers the successful login.
For example, in this code snippet, the assert will throw:
var coll = new Meteor.Collection("test");
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.publish('mineOrPublic', function () {
// Publish public records and those owned by subscribing user
return coll.find({owner: { $in: [ this.userId, null ]}});
});
}
if (Meteor.isClient) {
var sub = Meteor.subscribe('mineOrPublic');
var cursor = coll.find({});
cursor.observe({
added: function (doc) {
if (doc.owner) {
// This should always be true?!
assert(doc.owner === Meteor.userId());
}
}
});
}
Analogous to the added function above, if I write a template helper that checks Meteor.userId(), it will see a value of null, even when it is invoked with a data context of a document with an owner.
There is apparently a race condition between Meteor collection Pub/Sub and the Account userId update mechanisms. It seems to me that Meteor.userId() should always be updated before any subscriptions update based on a change in this.userId in a server publish function, but for some reason the opposite usually seems to be true (that is, the assert in the code above will usually throw).
The reason I care is because I have packages that depend on obtaining a valid Meteor Authentication token (using Accounts._storedLoginToken()) on the client for use in securing HTTP requests for files stored on the Meteor server. And the authentication token isn't correct until Meteor.userId() is. So the flow of events usually goes something like this:
User logs in
Publish function on server reruns based on the change in this.userId.
Client begins receiving new documents corresponding to the change in userId.
UI Template reactively updates to add DOM elements driven by new documents
Some of the DOM elements are <img> tags with src= values that depend on the data context.
HTTP requests are triggered and ultimately fail with 403 (forbidden) errors because the required authentication cookie hasn't been set yet.
Meteor.userId() finally updates on the client, and code reactively runs to set the authentication cookie
Helpers in the template that depend on a session variable set in the cookie update code are rerun, but the DOM doesn't change, because the URLs in the <img> tags don't change.
Because the DOM doesn't change, the tags don't retry their failed attempts to load the images.
Everything settles down, and the user has to manually reload the page to get their images to appear.
I've come up with two possible approaches to work around this issue:
In the template helper that generates the URL for the <img> tag, always append a dummy query string such as: "?time=" + new Date().getTime(). This causes the DOM to change every time the helper is called and fixes the problem, but it screws-up browser caching and if not coordinated will cause some assets to unnecessarily load multiple times, etc.
In every template helper that touches document data add a test of:
if (this.owner && this.owner !== Meteor.userId()) {
// Perhaps Meteor.loggingIn() could be used above?
// Invalid state, output placeholder
} else {
// Valid state, output proper value for template
}
I really hope someone knows of a less kludgy way to work around this. Alternatively, if consensus arises that this is a bug and Meteor's behavior is incorrect in this respect. I will happily file an issue on Github. I mostly really enjoy working with Meteor, but this is the kind of gritty annoyance that grinds in the gears of "it just works".
Thanks for any and all insights.
After trying lots of things, this variation on the example code in the OP seems to consistently solve the race condition, and I find this an acceptable resolution, unlike my initial attempted workarounds.
I still feel that this kind of logic should be unnecessary and welcome other approaches or opinions on whether Meteor's behavior in the OP sample code is correct or erroneous. If consensus emerges in the comments that Meteor's behavior is wrong, I will create an issue on Github for this.
Thanks for any additional feedback or alternative solutions.
var coll = new Meteor.Collection("test");
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.publish('mineOrPublic', function (clientUserId) {
if (this.userId === clientUserId) {
// Publish public records and those owned by subscribing user
return coll.find({owner: { $in: [ this.userId, null ]}});
} else {
// Don't return user owned docs unless client sub matches
return coll.find({owner: null});
}
});
}
if (Meteor.isClient) {
Deps.autorun(function () {
// Resubscribe anytime userId changes
var sub = Meteor.subscribe('mineOrPublic', Meteor.userId());
});
var cursor = coll.find({});
cursor.observe({
added: function (doc) {
if (doc.owner) {
// This should always be true?!
assert(doc.owner === Meteor.userId());
}
}
});
}
This code works by giving the server publish function the information it needs to recognize when it is running ahead of the client's own login state, thereby breaking the race condition.
I think this is something that Meteor should do automatically: clients should not see documents based on changes to this.userId in a publish function until after the client Meteor.userId() has been updated.
Do others agree?
I tried with this code that works on server too. In association with FileCollection package.
if (Meteor.isServer) {
CurrentUserId = null;
Meteor.publish(null, function() {
CurrentUserId = this.userId;
});
}
....
OrgFiles.allow({
read: function (userId, file) {
if (CurrentUserId !== file.metadata.owner) {
return false;
} else {
return true;
}
}
...
I have two collections
Offers (relevant fields: _id)
ShareRelations (relevant fields: receiverId and offerId)
and I'd like to publish only Offers to the logged in user which have been shared to him.
Actually, I'm doing this by using a helper array (visibleOffers) which I fill by looping for each ShareRelations and use this array later on the Offers.find as $in selector.
I wonder if this might be the meteor way to do this, or if I could do with less and/or prettier code?
My actual code to publish the Offers is the following:
Meteor.publish('offersShared', function () {
// check if the user is logged in
if (this.userId) {
// initialize helper array
var visibleOffers = [];
// initialize all shareRelations which the actual user is the receiver
var shareRelations = ShareRelations.find({receiverId: this.userId});
// check if such relations exist
if (shareRelations.count()) {
// loop trough all shareRelations and push the offerId to the array if the value isn't in the array actually
shareRelations.forEach(function (shareRelation) {
if (visibleOffers.indexOf(shareRelation.offerId) === -1) {
visibleOffers.push(shareRelation.offerId);
}
});
}
// return offers which contain the _id in the array visibleOffers
return Offers.find({_id: { $in: visibleOffers } });
} else {
// return no offers if the user is not logged in
return Offers.find(null);
}
});
Furthermore, the actual solution has the downside that if a new share relations is being created, the Offers collection on the client doesn't get updated with the newly visible offer instantly (read: page reload required. But I'm not sure if this is the case because of this publish method or because of some other code an this question is not primary because of this issue).
What you are looking for is a reactive join. You can accomplish this by directly using an observe in the publish function, or by using a library to do it for you. Meteor core is expected to have a join library at some point, but until then I'd recommend using publish-with-relations. Have a look at the docs, but I think the publish function you want looks something like this:
Meteor.publish('offersShared', function() {
return Meteor.publishWithRelations({
handle: this,
collection: ShareRelations,
filter: {receiverId: this.userId},
mappings: [{collection: Offers, key: 'offerId'}]
});
});
This should reactively publish all of the ShareRelations for the user, and all associated Offers. Hopefully publishing both won't be a problem.
PWR is a pretty legit package - several of us use it in production, and Tom Coleman contributes to it. The only thing I'll caution you about is that as of this writing, the current version in atmosphere (v0.1.5) has a bug which will result in a fairly serious memory leak. Until it gets bumped, see my blog post about how to run an updated local copy.
update 2/5/14:
The discover meteor blog has an excellent post on reactive joins which I highly recommend reading.
The way to do this is along the lines of this Question using observeChanges(). Still trying to figure out how to get it all working for my example, see Meteor, One to Many Relationship & add field only to client side collection in Publish?
You can use the reactive-publish package (I am one of authors):
Meteor.publish('offersShared', function () {
// check if the user is logged in
if (this.userId) {
this.autorun(function (computation) {
// initialize helper array
var visibleOffers = [];
// initialize all shareRelations which the actual user is the receiver
var shareRelations = ShareRelations.find({receiverId: this.userId}, {fields: {offerId: 1}});
// loop trough all shareRelations and push the offerId to the array if the value isn't in the array actually
shareRelations.forEach(function (shareRelation) {
if (visibleOffers.indexOf(shareRelation.offerId) === -1) {
visibleOffers.push(shareRelation.offerId);
}
});
// return offers which contain the _id in the array visibleOffers
return Offers.find({_id: { $in: visibleOffers } });
});
} else {
// return no offers if the user is not logged in
return Offers.find(null);
}
});
You can simply wrap your existing non-reactive code into an autorun and it will start to work. Just be careful to be precise which fields you query on because if you query on all fields then autorun will be rerun on any field change of ShareRelations, not just offerId.
I'm trying to write a webapp using Meteor and I'm definitely failing to grok something about subscribing to published datasets. The entire app is up on github (linked to the latest commit for posterity), but I'll try to summarize below.
I have a collection called teams which is available to both client and server:
Teams = new Meteor.Collection( "teams" );
On the server, I want to publish a list of all of the teams:
Meteor.publish( "allteams", function() { ...
There's a very simple cursor which makes up this published list:
var handle = Teams.find( {} ).observeChanges({
added: function( id ) {
console.log( "New team added" );
if ( !initializing ) {
console.log( "Telling subscribers it's all change" );
self.added( "teams", id, {} );
self.ready();
}
}
});
The client subscribes to that source, and when elements are added the client will add pins to a map:
Meteor.autorun( function() {
Meteor.subscribe( "allteams", function() {
console.log( "All teams has been updated" );
// Do more stuff
}
};
When the list is initially populated the autorun runs fine, but if I add another element to the collection then the publisher method logs to say "I noticed this" but nothing happens in the subscriber.
The aim of the above is as follows:
There is a list of teams on the server which consists of a name and long/lat details
When a client connects, they receive that list of teams and they're plotted on a map
If a team is added to the list on the server side, each client is notified and a new pin appears on the map.
In terms of the app, I probably don't need pins to magically appear, but it's a useful way of learning publish and subscribe, especially when I don't get it right! Eventually, "allteams" will probably be a bit more fine-grained than just the entire list of teams, so I guess it's akin to making a view on the data.
Am I missing something completely obvious?
Edit: I worked it out and put the answer below. tl;dr I wasn't subscribing to a reactive data source at all.
It's probably not polite to answer my own question, but I worked out what I was doing wrong and I figured that other people might come across the same thing.
Simple answer is that I wasn't doing what I claimed to be doing in the title of the queston, specifically, not subscribing to a reactive data source.
Meteor.autorun( function() {
Meteor.subscribe( "allteams", function() {
console.log( "All teams has been updated" );
// Do more stuff
}
};
Here I've passed the subscribe method to autorun, but that method itself isn't a reactive data source. However, it returns something which is!
// Define a subscription
var handle = Meteor.subscribe( "foo", { onReady: function() { ... } } );
Meteor.autorun( function() {
if ( handle.ready() ) {
// Now do something every time the subscription is marked as ready
}
};
The ready method of a subscription handle is reactive, so the autorun now executes every time the published document set is updated. That leads me to further questions about the efficiency of multiple clients subscribing to a database cursor and watching for changes, but I'll come to that in another question.
If autopublish is still on, this may be the cause of your problems. Try disabling autopublish and seeing if the publish statement now works properly.