Ah, yea I should have explained that better. If you have the “import” at the top of the file, then it has to be defined at the point that file is executed. You can wrap the entire file in a Meteor.startup function and that will solve it. Also you can “import” it inside of the component right before you use it (though this can be time consuming to migrate).
For example:
// in both/models/items.js
const Items = new Mongo.Collection("items");
...
this.Items = Items;
and in your component file:
// in client/components/Items/Items.jsx
const Items = this.Items;
const Component = React.createClass({
getInitialState() {
return {
foo: Items.findOne();
}
}
});
this.Component = Component;
This way it’s not being called until after it’s defined. You could also do this:
// in client/components/Items/Items.jsx
Meteor.startup(function() {
const Items = Items;
const Component = React.createClass({
getInitialState() {
return {
foo: Items.findOne();
}
}
});
Component = Component;
}); // end Meteor.startup
However, I would go a step further and organize your collections into their own modules. Models consume them but they are different things. You could make one collections file like this:
// in both/collections/index.js
const Items = new Mongo.Collection("items");
const Posts = new Mongo.Collection("posts");
this.Collections = {
Items: Items,
Posts: Posts,
};
Then in your files you can do this:
// in client/components/Items/Items.jsx
Meteor.startup(function() {
const {Items} = Collections;
// in 1.3 would be import {items} from 'boths/collections';
const Component = React.createClass({
getInitialState() {
return {
foo: Items.findOne();
}
}
});
Component = Component;
}); // end Meteor.startup
Or since this example is a module (not just a single export) we could do this without the wrapper like this:
// in client/components/Items/Items.jsx
const Component = React.createClass({
getInitialState() {
const {Items} = Collections; // now it's defined at call time
return {
foo: Items.findOne();
}
}
});
Component = Component;
Hope this helps! I need to write this up in a blog post soon 
Well almost, at least with Babel. JavaScript itself also does OO very poorly compared to Java/C#/Ruby/etc… However, it does do the functional paradigm really well and is getting more ‘functional’ features in ES7/8
I decided to not make the video tutorials because I only had a few signups. However, I think I might have been a bit too early 