Meteor Collection Helpers

https://atmospherejs.com/package/collection-helpers

Collection helpers automatically sets up a transformation on your collections allowing for simple models, with an interface similar to template helpers.

Installation

Collection helpers can be installed with Meteorite. From inside a Meteorite-managed app:

$ mrt add collection-helpers

Usage

It's recommended to set up helpers on both the server and client, that's generally anywhere outside of the client and server directories. This way your helpers can be accessed both server side and client side.

Some simple helpers:

Books = new Meteor.Collection('books');
Authors = new Meteor.Collection('authors');

Books.helpers({
  author: function() {
    return Authors.findOne(this.authorId);
  }
});

Authors.helpers({
  fullName: function() {
    return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
  },
  books: function() {
    return Books.find({ authorId: this._id });
  }
});

Example use within a template

Our relationships are resolved by the collection helper, avoiding unnecessary template helpers. So we can simply write:

Template.books.helpers({
  books: function() {
    return Books.find();
  }
});

...with the corresponding template:

<template name="books">
  <ul>
  {{#each books}}
    <li>{{name}} by {{author.fullName}}</li>
  {{/each}}
  </ul>
</template>

Use outside of templates

You can of course access helpers outside of your templates:

Books.findOne().author().firstName; // Charles
Books.findOne().author().fullName(); // Charles Darwin

Meteor.users

You can also apply helpers to the Meteor.users collection

Meteor.users.helpers({
  // ...
});

Credits

Thanks to Tom Coleman for the idea on the refactor and Mathieu Bouchard's method to extend Meteor.Collection (used in collection-helpers pre 0.2.0)

License

MIT