Request topics for screencasts or blog posts!

community
21

Thanks for reaching out to us for input!

Your question really deserves a formal survey to go out to ALL the registered Meteor accounts. Particularly since a considerable portion of the existing meteor documentation is more like a spec rather than a hands-on programming guide. (When there’s not an operational code example, the docs can be quite abstract.)

Here are some suggestions:

  1. How to debug when a template fails to render a variable or object sent by a helper.
  2. How to use or explore a meteor stack trace (especially when it doesn’t mention my file and line number)
  3. Best practices for designing code that will survive crashes, scaling, and hot code pushes
  4. How to load-test and analyze code performance
  5. Clarifying ‘this’ in the major contexts / methods
  6. Demonstrate allow() and deny() including options such as fetch and transform
  7. Meteor startup sequence and how to wait or guard for reactive data that is not available yet. That would provide me peace of mind that my code will still work when the DDP link, server, or DB is slow. What code should be in the startup function versus not in it.
  8. Best practices on how to determine whether a collection on the client-side is up-to-date.
  9. More understanding on reactivity and templates. For instance, does a rapidly updating reactive variable trigger multiple sequential events in the template, or is there a regular refresh period? I’m trying to determine if my code needs to throttle events, or if that’s built into the reactivity.
  10. How to properly test a meteor application.

In any screencasts that you produce, please:

  1. help us visualize where possible by using the console to explore collections and step through methods,
  2. include a comments section or link to a discussion area, and
  3. link code examples to a github repo with line-by-line explanatory comments.

Thanks again for reaching out to us for input and best of luck with the screencasts!

5 Likes
22

@interfusion that’s a great list! Thanks.

I’m looking for ways to make the documentation better by harnessing the power of the community. One of the options I’m exploring is making it easier for people to contribute code samples and tips on the docs.meteor.com page through a comment system - do you think that would be helpful?

4 Likes
23

As long as there’s a bit of quality control on the code samples that get added to the docs, I think that’s a great idea, Sashko.

The Meteor community has some very capable and generous people who would, no doubt, get behind this initiative.

24

@sashko
I think code samples would make the docs even more helpful to newcomers. I do like the idea of comments, the people that want to improve the docs will most likely submit quality code samples.

25

Thanks for considering my suggestions @sashko. I definitely think that harnessing the power of the community would be helpful. I have often lamented that there is no way to ask a question about a specific clause in the documentation. Then, if community members could respond with answers or code samples, that would be fantastic! The question is whether you need to build all of that, or simply provide a comment with link to StackOverflow, Github, MeteorPad, etc.

26

Started a new topic here: Good drop-in comment system for docs.meteor.com

27

Folks already mentioned security, authorization (access control) and use of allow/deny rules to be addressed in future blog posts and screencasts.

But I’d like to ask more specifically for a post (similar to @sashko’s recent post) which can demystify or reason about:

  • when and how is it better to use Meteor method calls and allow/deny rules in combination and,

  • what are the recommended ways to use Roles and Permissions (or other) packages in combination

28

Deploying a mobile app using Meteor, maybe even adding it to the App Store or Google Play Store

4 Likes
29

I love this idea! There will be a nice symmetry about having one post about getting data and another about setting it.

1 Like
30

hey @chadkruser, I had a similar confusion (coming from Ruby), but eventually was able to find a simple way of doing this. wrapAsync really simplifies the code so maybe this will help you/others out:

var Stripe = StripeAPI(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY);
var stripeCustomerChargeSync = Meteor.wrapAsync(Stripe.charges.create, Stripe.charges);
var stripeCustomerCreateSync = Meteor.wrapAsync(Stripe.customers.create, Stripe.customers);
var customer = stripeCustomerCreateSync({
	card: token,
	description: 'payinguser@example.com'
});
var charge = stripeCustomerChargeSync({
	amount: 1000,
	currency: 'usd',
	customer: customer.id
});
// then use customer and charge objects to do whatever you need to do
1 Like
31

A more concrete/simple explanation on when to use Tracker and its functions would be really helpful. I was confused as to its role when I was first learning (still don’t completely get it). The one in the official manual was a bit much to handle all at once.

32

Maybe that’s a good direction: give people a guide about how to accomplish things with Meteor…

I would love to see blog posts or screencasts that complement/extend the existing meteor documentation instead of jumping topics. Documentation has to be concise but screencasts or blog posts can go further by showing use cases and different implementation/examples…

As long as there’s a bit of quality control on the code samples that get added to the docs…

I think code samples would make the docs even more helpful to newcomers…

I think that’s a pretty good description of what the Meteor Cookbook has been trying to do! :slight_smile:

For what it’s worth, most of these questions have been asked in one form or another on the email lists, and people have been trying to write some docs and best practices (with code samples) and the like for people to refer to. It’s debatable how well written those documents are, but 900+ people seem to think there’s some progress being made.

So, going through the above comments, lets pull out all the suggestions and look at topics:

Fundamentals

  • Meteor startup sequence and how to wait or guard for reactive data
    that is not available yet.
  • when and how is it better to use Meteor method calls and allow/deny rules in combination and,
  • sync vs async (vs isomorphic code)

Design

  • suitability for certain types of apps (business apps, games, social apps etc.);
  • blaze vs {angular, react, polymer, famo.us, ember, jquery ui, etc}

Debugging

  • Meteor and debugging on the server
  • How to debug when a template fails to render a variable or object sent by a helper.
  • How to use or explore a meteor stack trace (especially when it doesn’t mention my file and line number)

Data Layer

  • Meteor and Redis
  • how livedata works or how we get from html to htmlJS to the client and how we rendered that to the screen
  • Best practices on how to determine whether a collection on the client-side is up-to-date.

Security

  • Demonstrate allow() and deny() including options such as fetch and
    transform
  • authorization (who can do what in which situations)
  • what are the recommended ways to use Roles and Permissions (or other)
    packages in combination

Deployment / Environments

  • separating applications, shared databases, etc

Templating

  • How to use Blaze without Meteor
  • Clarifying ‘this’ in the major contexts / methods
  • More understanding on reactivity and templates. For instance, does a rapidly updating reactive variable trigger multiple sequential events in the template, or is there a regular refresh period? I’m trying to determine if my code needs to throttle events, or if that’s built into the reactivity.

Testing & Hardening

  • How to properly test a meteor application.

Scaling

  • Best practices for designing code that will survive crashes, scaling,
    and hot code pushes
  • demo that showed Meteor scaling linearly as servers were added
  • How to load-test and analyze code performance

Mobile

  • Deploying a mobile app using Meteor
  • Adding it to the App Store or Google Play Store cross-platform performance

Tracker

  • A more concrete/simple explanation on when to use Tracker and its
    functions would be really helpful.

I think it’s fairly obvious that there’s a dozen screencasts and/or blog posts right there.

However, I think it’s important to point out that there are already quite a few blog posts on these topics. Here are some topics that are just from the Cookbook (not counting what’s been written in Discover Meteor, EventedMind, etc.) So, if anybody wants to write a blog post or do a screencast, here is some source material to help you get started. :books:

Design
Schema Design

Data Layer

Debugging
- Console Logging
- Debugging
- Performance Tuning

Fundamentals
- Event Cycle

Security
???

Deployment / Environments

Templating
- Event Cycle

Testing

Scaling

Mobile

Tracker
???

Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve recently started a sabbatical to work exclusively on the Cookbook and Clinical Meteor the next few months. I’m planning on adding end-to-end tests for all the examples in the cookbook, and to start extracting web components that can be shared between apps. I’ll be happy to try to make sure that the next rewrite of the Cookbook addresses some of these questions. This thread has given me quite a few ideas on how to maybe better organize the cookbook, and where some of the missing pieces might be.

If MDG has some specific formatting specs they’d like to see official docs written in, I would be happy to shift the Cookbook in that direction on my next rewrite.

16 Likes
33

I wish I could like @awatson1978’s post more than once! :smile: