Can't access my collections from the client

help
1

Hi guys! Ok so I have these two publications to get data from two collections that are defined as follows:

export const Conversation = new Mongo.Collection(‘conversation’);
export const Message = new Mongo.Collection(‘message’);

I also have to pubs in the server like so:

Meteor.publish(‘Message’, function(){
if (this.userId) {
…
return Message.find({‘conversation_id’:{$in:map}});
}
…
}

And I’m using a createContainer function to encapsulate data within the main component. I wrote my subs inside this function like so:

export default createContainer(() => {
const handleChat = Meteor.subscribe(‘Message’);
const handleChatReady = handleChat.ready();
return {
…
chatLog : handleChatReady ? Message.find().fetch() : false
…
}
},App);

It looks like the actual code is “well written”, since I’ve been accessing user data this way so far and the app’s been behaving great and reactive. However, when I added the pub/sub for the message/conversation collections, the data isn’t coming through.
Things I’ve checked(Not to many since I’m kinda noob):

-I noticed that if I type the subscription line into the browser, the data shows up
-I also noticed that, even though it says I should be able to type ‘Message.find()’ and get a cursos, I actually get Message is undefined, even after I manually subscribe from within the browser.
-I tried to change the pub to null so I can access it globally but still I can’t access using ‘Message.find()’ in the client.

Anything I’m missing here?

2

Kind of an obvious one, but have you tried running the same query in the mongo shell?
db.message.find({'conversation_id':{$in:<map>}})

if you’re using a local db, you can start it with meteor mongo

3

Yes, I can do that, forgot to mention it in the post.
Also, I have meteortoys:allthings installed I’m showing the collections there. The Message collection currently empty because the subscription doesn’t go through, but I can totally se the Conversation collection there with the documents that I wanted it to show. I have its publication set up as null still just in case but I still can’t do a : “Conversation.find()” in the dev console in the browser

4

Another thing to check is that your collection is defined on both client and server

5

Ok here’s the part where I’m being completely honest and say that I kinda read the Folder Structure section in the Meteor docs and I thought I got that right but I have my doubts. I have both collections inside the following structure:

app
|__imports
|__client
|__server

Inside the imports folder I have a subfolder called “api” and inside that, I have the actualy collection files Message.js and Coversation.js

I thought they were being run in both server and client only because meteortoys was always showing the collections and since thath’s something that’s being rendered in the browser I kinda got to that conclusion, but clearly not.

Also, I’m importing both files into the main.js that’s inside the server toplevel folder. Should I also import it in the main.js that bootstraps the client?

6

Your structure should be fine. For testing purposes, you can do this to access the collection from the console. I would recommend removing it afterwards.

// client
import { Message} from '/imports/api/message.js';

Template.<yourTemplate>.onCreated(function () {  
  window.Message= Message;
});
1 Like
7

OMG Thank you so much!!! I think I found out what was wrong, I was importing the whole file as in import ‘…/…/Message/Message’ but I didn’t use the { Message } thing. Everything seems to be working just fine now. I’m also kinda new to the import/export declarations so there’s that haha Again, thanks a lot!!!

8

This works, but aren’t Collections somehow accessible from the Meteor object in the browser console? Without having to use this work-around? If not, how does the client code access them!?

9

Did you find a solution @evolross I’m looking as well