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Meteor Cookbook
Meteor Cookbook

Meteor Cookbook: Build elegant full-stack web applications with Meteor, the JavaScript framework that's redefining web development

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Meteor Cookbook

Chapter 2. Customizing with Packages

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Adding Meteor packages
  • Removing Meteor packages
  • Discovering new packages with Atmosphere
  • Creating a multipage application with Iron Router
  • Building a custom package
  • Using npm modules
  • Publishing custom packages to Atmosphere

Introduction

The package system in Meteor makes your development life much easier. It also speaks to one of Meteor's core principles—modular development. If you want to use the entire default Meteor stack, great! If you don't like a particular part and want to swap it out with a third-party package, great! It's completely up to you. Meteor allows you to quickly add and remove functionality, use the latest code shared by others, and create your own reusable code segments. This chapter will provide you with the recipes needed to take full advantage of the Meteor packages system.

Adding Meteor packages

The core Meteor Development Group (MDG) have developed over 140 packages for you to use. These packages provide features and functionality ranging from simple display tweaks, to fully integrated account management. Not only are these packages useful, but they're extremely easy to add to your project. In addition to the core MDG packages, there are hundreds of third-party packages available, all of which are free and could be just as easily added. This recipe will show you how to add Meteor packages to your project.

Getting ready

You will need Meteor installed and have a project created. Any project will do. You should also have a terminal window open and navigate to the root folder of your project, for example, if the name of your project is packagesTest, located in the ~/Documents/MeteorProjects folder, you would enter the following command in a terminal window:

$ cd ~/Documents/MeteorProjects/packagesTest

How to do it...

Let's install the fastclick package...

Removing Meteor packages

Removing Meteor packages is just as easy as adding them. This recipe will show you how to quickly remove a Meteor package.

Getting ready

You will need Meteor installed and have a project created. You should also have a terminal window open and navigate to the root folder of your project. For example, if the name of your project is packagesTest, located in the ~/Documents/MeteorProjects folder, enter the following command in a terminal window:

$ cd ~/Documents/MeteorProjects/packagesTest

How to do it…

Let's remove the insecure Meteor package. In your terminal window, enter the following command:

$ meteor remove insecure

This will remove the insecure package.

How it works…

The meteor remove [package name] command will direct Meteor to look for the named package in your project declaration files and remove the declaration and source files for the package from your project.

There's more…

It's sometimes very helpful to check and see which packages...

Discovering new packages with Atmosphere

Meteor is an emerging platform, growing in popularity every day. The Meteor community is coming up with new packages and integrations with existing JavaScript libraries on almost a daily basis. Because the core Meteor team doesn't have time to test and apply every new package made by the community, a package registry, with a streamlined installation process, has been created. This package registry is called Atmosphere. Atmosphere has a clean, simple UI, which allows you to search for, rate, and discover new packages by popularity. This recipe will show you how to use Atmosphere to find and implement both Meteor and third-party packages.

Getting ready

There's nothing really to do here, but you'll definitely want to have Meteor installed and a project created to start using the packages listed on Atmosphere right away!

How to do it…

To discover new packages with Atmosphere, proceed with the following steps:

  1. In a browser, navigate to...

Creating a multipage application with Iron Router

Iron Router is an extremely useful Atmosphere package. It allows you to quickly and easily add multiple server pages to your Meteor project. This recipe will show you how to configure your project to use Iron Router.

Getting ready

You need to have Meteor installed. You will also need a blank Meteor project (see the Setting up your project file structure recipe in Chapter 1 , Optimizing Your Workflow).

Finally, you will need to add the Iron Router package to your Meteor project. You can reference the Adding Meteor packages recipe found previously in this chapter, or enter the following command in your terminal window, in the root folder of your project:

$ meteor add iron:router

How to do it…

We are going to create a very simple example of multiple pages and we will use a fresh blank project to do so.

  1. First, set up the route paths for the multiple pages. Create a subfolder called router in the both subfolder of your project. This can be...

Building a custom package

As you become more familiar with Meteor, you will want to start creating your own custom package, which consolidates the code you may find useful in multiple projects. This recipe will walk you through the basics of creating your own personal Meteor package.

Getting ready

The only thing you need for this recipe is Meteor and a text editor.

How to do it…

We will create a package that will allow us to easily write to the console in not only the client web console, but also in the server terminal console.

  1. To create a new baseline package, open a terminal window and navigate to where you would like your package to reside. Once there, execute the following command:
    $ meteor create --package [myMeteorID]:testpack
    

    Make sure you replace [myMeteorID] with your own Meteor Developer Account ID or with the ID of the Meteor organization you belong to, for example (and for the rest of this chapter), we will use the packtmeteor organization. So our command will look like the...

Introduction


The package system in Meteor makes your development life much easier. It also speaks to one of Meteor's core principles—modular development. If you want to use the entire default Meteor stack, great! If you don't like a particular part and want to swap it out with a third-party package, great! It's completely up to you. Meteor allows you to quickly add and remove functionality, use the latest code shared by others, and create your own reusable code segments. This chapter will provide you with the recipes needed to take full advantage of the Meteor packages system.

Adding Meteor packages


The core Meteor Development Group (MDG) have developed over 140 packages for you to use. These packages provide features and functionality ranging from simple display tweaks, to fully integrated account management. Not only are these packages useful, but they're extremely easy to add to your project. In addition to the core MDG packages, there are hundreds of third-party packages available, all of which are free and could be just as easily added. This recipe will show you how to add Meteor packages to your project.

Getting ready

You will need Meteor installed and have a project created. Any project will do. You should also have a terminal window open and navigate to the root folder of your project, for example, if the name of your project is packagesTest, located in the ~/Documents/MeteorProjects folder, you would enter the following command in a terminal window:

$ cd ~/Documents/MeteorProjects/packagesTest

How to do it...

Let's install the fastclick package as an example...

Left arrow icon Right arrow icon

Description

This book is meant for developers of all experience levels looking to create mobile and full-stack web applications in JavaScript. Many of the simple recipes can easily be followed by less-experienced developers, while some of the advanced recipes will require extensive knowledge of existing web, mobile, and server technologies. Any application or enterprise web developer looking to create full-stack JavaScript-based apps will benefit from the recipes and concepts covered in this book.

Who is this book for?

This book is meant for developers of all experience levels looking to create mobile and full-stack web applications in JavaScript. Many of the simple recipes can easily be followed by less-experienced developers, while some of the advanced recipes will require extensive knowledge of existing web, mobile, and server technologies. Any application or enterprise web developer looking to create full-stack JavaScript-based apps will benefit from the recipes and concepts covered in this book.

What you will learn

  • Create and deploy userfriendly, touchenabled web applications
  • Rapidly build robust, responsive user interfaces
  • Integrate any npm/Node package in minutes
  • Leverage isomorphic JavaScript to develop fullstack applications
  • Publish your own reusable custom packages
  • Quickly implement user accounts compatible with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and more
  • Convert external API streams into reactive, selfupdating infographics
  • Secure and optimize your Mongo data collections
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Table of Contents

13 Chapters
1. Optimizing Your Workflow Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Customizing with Packages Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Building Great User Interfaces Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Creating Models Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Implementing DDP Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Mastering Reactivity Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Using Client Methods Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Integrating Third-party Libraries Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Securing Your Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Working with Accounts Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Leveraging Advanced Features Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. Creating Useful Projects Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.4
(5 Ratings)
5 star 60%
4 star 20%
3 star 20%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Jebin Aug 14, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
The book is an absolute cookbook to learn Meteor recipes. If you are looking for book full of examples to learn how to do most of the things in Meteor, this is a great book. I would suggest the readers to have expectations of reading a cookbook and not whole app development guide. The book covers pretty nicely what it is supposed to be. Learn the core concepts of Meteor from Meteor site and develop some fun projects. Read this book then and you will appreciate it definitely.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Michael C. Nov 13, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Quick read to get started quickly.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
JN Oct 15, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Really great book, ended up reading it cover to cover.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Jason DeVine Aug 20, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
I found this book to be a very good introduction to programming meteor. While it's not a deep dive into any area of the platform, it does do a good job of covering the basics of building an application. Well worth the $$.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Lawrence Baldwin Jul 12, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
After working through the online tutorial on Meteor, I wanted to learn more, so I bought this book and worked through it. I had mixed feelings about this book. On the plus side, it does teach a number of useful things about Meteor that are not covered in the online tutorial. Learning about Atmosphere, the library of Meteor add-ons, seeing some examples of using Iron Router for created multi-page apps, a more detailed walk-through of developing iOS apps, and simply walking through lots of examples one by one are all very helpful. On the minus side, I found far too much of the book concerned with integrating Meteor with other packages, without enough focus on the basics (e.g. how to do more complex queries). In order to keep the examples short and simple, the book takes endless shortcuts, such as using Bootstrap to avoid adding a few lines of CSS, and it has little or no naming conventions, and in general does not set a good example for coding. It gives the impression that it is all about quick and dirty prototyping. It includes essentially nothing on debugging, testing, etc. If I plan to do any actual Meteor development, I will certainly need to buy another book--this one doesn't cover enough of the essentials.The longest example in the book, "Creating a coloring book with the Canvas element," I was unable to get to work, even after downloading the code from the Packt website. There were error messages that came up, and this may have been my error, but the book provided me with no help in figuring out what had gone wrong, and I found nowhere to submit a question (other than his suggestion I post to Stack Overflow).On the other hand, I did enjoy Strack's breezy style. Being introduced to lots of packages, some of which I was unfamiliar with, had some interest. I certainly understand Meteor far better than I did before beginning the book (not hard to do). I wanted to like it better than I did. Perhaps if I had read a different Meteor book before reading this one, I would have appreciated more the specific things it brought forward.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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