Meteor in Action

372 Pages·2015·15.49 MB·English

M A N N I N G
Stephan Hochhaus
Manuel Schoebel
F Matt DeBergalis
OREWORD BY
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Meteor in Action
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Meteor in Action
STEPHAN HOCHHAUS
MANUEL CHRISTOPH SCHOEBEL
MANNING
SHELTER ISLAND
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brief contents
PART 1 LOOK—A SHOOTING STAR! ...........................................1
1 ■ A better way to build apps 3
2 ■ My fridge! A reactive game 31
PART 2 3, 2, 1—IMPACT!.........................................................49
3 ■ Working with templates 51
4 ■ Working with data 76
5 ■ Fully reactive editing 105
6 ■ Users, authentications, and permissions 130
7 ■ Exchanging data 153
8 ■ Routing using Iron.Router 176
9 ■ The package system 203
10 ■ Advanced server methods 227
PART 3 LEAVING THE CRATER................................................251
11 ■ Building and debugging 253
12 ■ Going into production 281
v
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contents
foreword xiii
preface xv
acknowledgments xvii
about this book xix
about the cover illustration xxiii
PART 1 LOOK—A SHOOTING STAR!................................1
1 A better way to build apps 3
1.1 Introducing Meteor 4
The story behind Meteor 4 ■ The Meteor stack 5
Isomorphic frameworks: full-stack JavaScript 7
Processing in the browser: running on distributed platforms 9
Reactive programming 11
1.2 How Meteor works 12
Core projects 14 ■ Isobuild and the CLI tool 17
Client code vs. server code 17
1.3 Strengths and weaknesses 19
Where Meteor shines 19 ■ Challenges when using Meteor 21
1.4 Creating new applications 24
Setting up a new project 24 ■ Starting the application 25
vii
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viii CONTENTS
1.5 Dissecting the default project 25
helloWorld.css 26 ■ helloWorld.html 26 ■ helloWorld.js 27
1.6 Summary 29
2 My fridge! A reactive game 31
2.1 Application overview 32
2.2 Initial setup 32
Setting up a new project 33
2.3 Creating a layout 34
Setting the styles 34 ■ Adding the templates 35
2.4 Adding content to the database in real time 38
Storing items in the database 38 ■ Connecting data
to templates 40 ■ Adding a defined set of products 43
2.5 Moving items into the fridge 44
Adding jQuery-UI to the project 44 ■ Defining drop targets
for items 44 ■ Allowing items to be draggable 47
2.6 Deploying to meteor.com and using the fridge 48
2.7 Summary 48
PART 2 3, 2, 1—IMPACT! .............................................49
3 Working with templates 51
3.1 Introduction to templates 52
3.2 Working with templates 53
The Blaze engine 53 ■ Organizing template files 54
3.3 Creating dynamic HTML templates 55
Double and triple-braced tags (expressions) 55 ■ Inclusion tags
(partials) 57 ■ Block tags 60 ■ Helpers 63
3.4 Handling events 68
Template event maps 69 ■ Event propagation 70
Preventing the browser’s default behavior 71
3.5 The template life cycle 72
3.6 Summary 74
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CONTENTS ix
4 Working with data 76
4.1 Meteor’s default data sources 79
What makes a data source reactive? 80 ■ How reactive data
is connected to functions 81
4.2 Building a house-sitter app 82
Setting up templates 84 ■ Connecting to a database and
declaring collections 85
4.3 Working with the Session object 86
The Session object 86 ■ Using Session to store selected
drop-down values 87 ■ Creating a reactive context
using Tracker.autorun 89
4.4 Working with MongoDB collections 89
Querying documents in MongoDB 91 ■ Working with
Meteor collections 92 ■ Initializing a collection 93
Querying collections 94 ■ Display collection data in
a template 95 ■ Updating data in a collection 98
Inserting new data into a collection 101 ■ Removing
data from a collection 102
4.5 Summary 104
5 Fully reactive editing 105
5.1 The reactive editing workflow 106
5.2 Reactive front ends vs. DOM manipulation 107
5.3 Staging changes in a local collection 111
5.4 Displaying collection data within a form 115
Adding array index information to an #each loop 116
5.5 Reactive updates using a local collection 118
Event map for the houseForm template 119 ■ Event map
for the plantFieldset template 121
5.6 Implementing a simple notifications system 124
Adding a notifications template 125 ■ Adding a
status property 125 ■ Using a Session variable to
trigger notifications 127
5.7 Summary 129
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