The Meteor Chef - Base (@1.0.2.1)

A starting point for Meteor apps.

Base is the lazy person's starter kit for Meteor. It includes some commonly used packages (biased to The Meteor Chef) and code for common functionality. This is the starter kit for all Meteor Chef recipes.

For more detail on updates, read the Changelog.

Packages Included

• Accounts (Base) - meteor add accounts-base
• Accounts (Password) - meteor add accounts-password
• Audit Argument Checks - meteor add audit-argument-checks
• Bootstrap 3 - meteor add twbs:bootstrap
• Browser Policy - meteor add browser-policy
• Check - meteor add check
• Handlebars Server - meteor add cmather:handlebars-server
• Iron Router - meteor add iron:router
• jQuery - meteor add jquery
• jQuery Validation - meteor add themeteorchef:jquery-validation
• NPM - meteor add meteorhacks:npm
• Sass - meteor add particle4dev:sass@0.3.0
• Underscore - meteor add underscore

Note: Base also supports loading NPM packages using the meteorhacks:npm package. To load NPM packages, add name and version information to /packages.json and inside of your file (server only), load the package with var package = Meteor.npmRequire('package-name');. For more information, see the meteorhacks:npm documentation.

File Structure

Base comes with a pre-defined file structure common to all projects along with some skeleton files for getting started quickly. Here's what it looks like:

/root
---/.meteor
---/client
------/controllers
---------/authenticated
------------header.js
---------/public
------------login.js
------------recover-password.js
------------reset-password.js
------------signup.js
------/helpers
---------helpers-ui.js
------/includes
---------_header.html
------/layouts
---------layout-default.html
------/routes
---------hooks.js
---------routes-authenticated.js
---------routes-global.js
---------routes-public.js
------/stylesheets
---------/sass
------------/globals
---------------_extends.scss
------------/views
---------------/public
------------------_login.scss
---------application.scss
-------/views
---------/authenticated
------------index.html
---------/public
------------loading.html
------------login.html
------------not-found.html
------------recover-password.html
------------reset-password.html
------------signup.html
---/collections
------example.js
------users.js
---/packages
------ (See List Above)
---/public
---/server
------/admin
---------/startup-functions
------------browser-policies.js
------------test-accounts.js
---------startup.js
------/email
---------/templates
------------reset-password.js
------/publications
---------example.js

JavaScript & CSS

Prior to v2.0.0, Base was written in CoffeeScript. At the request of the community, Base was ported back to native JavaScript.

CSS in Base is written using Sass.

Functionality

Configuration

For things like API keys and connection strings, Base supports loading a settings.json file (located at /settings.json) on startup. By default, settings.json includes a public and private object where you can store client only and server only values respectively. To learn more about making use of settings.json, check out our example in the Meteor Patterns wiki.

Bootstrap (@3.2.1)

Base makes use of the Bootstrap front-end Framework. It may not be your bag of chips and is definitely not required. If you want to swap it out, you'll need to unhook the markup in each of the included template files in /client/views and uninstall the twbs:bootstrap package by running meteor remove twbs:bootstrap in your terminal.

In respect to UI, Base uses Bootstrap's .navbar element, as well as its .container and a few .row/.col-<size>-<columns> wrappers. You'll also find the .btn class and its modifiers (.success, .warning, etc.) in use throughout the app. All of these implementations are merely presentational and can be changed (or removed) as you see fit.

Basic Routing

Base comes with a collection of pre-defined routes and templates for common functionality. Base also includes a set of common route filters for managing user access. Routes bundled include:

- / (Authenticated)
- /login (Public)
- /recover-password (Public)
- /reset-password (Public)
- /signup (Public)

A UI helper called currentRoute has been added to Base which allows you to add an active class to menu items in your navigation to reflect the user's current location.

A collection of hooks has also been added to Base to control route access based on different conditions (e.g. whether a user is logged in or not).

Authentication

Base includes a complete authentication pattern complete with:

• Login (at /login)
• Logout (no path, implemented as a dropdown item/click event in /client/controllers/header.js)
• Password Recovery (at /recover-password and /reset-password)
• Signup (at /signup)

Example Collection/Publication/Subscription

Base includes a collection called Example, along with a publication and subscription pattern to show moving data from the server to the client. Publications are defined in /server/publications/example.js and a subscription is demonstrated on the index route in /client/routes/routes-authenticated.js.

Validation

Base includes support for client-side validation via jQuery Validation. Validation is provided for all public templates: login, signup, recover password, and reset password.

Automatic Admin User Creation

When developing, having a handful of user accounts to test your application with can come in handy. Base comes with an automated account generation script located in server/admin/startup.js that creates accounts based on an array of specified users. Note: by default this creates one Admin user on server startup, so make sure to customize or remove this user so the public can't access your app.