Complete NPM integration for Meteor

See MeteorHacks article on Complete NPM integration for Meteor

Adding NPM support to your app

mrt add npm

Create packages.json file for listing dependencies.

{
  "redis": "0.8.2",
  "github": "0.1.8"
}

Example on using npm module inside a Meteor method

if (Meteor.isClient) {
  getGists = function getGists(user, callback) {
    Meteor.call('getGists', user, callback);
  }
}

if (Meteor.isServer) {
  Meteor.methods({
    'getGists': function getGists(user) {
      var GithubApi = Meteor.require('github');
      var github = new GithubApi({
          version: "3.0.0"
      });

      var gists = Meteor.sync(function(done) {
        github.gists.getFromUser({user: 'arunoda'}, function(err, data) {
          done(null, data);
        });
      });

      return gists.result;
    }
  });
}

API

Meteor.require(npmModuleName)

This method loads NPM modules you've specified in the packages.json file.

var Github = Meteor.require('github');

Meteor.sync(func)

Meteor APIs are executed synchronously. Most of the NodeJS modules works asynchronously. So we need a way to bride the gap. Meteor.sync() does that.

Meteor.sync() pause the execution until you invoke done() callback as shown below.

var response = Meteor.sync(function(done) {
  setTimeout(function() { 
    done(null, 1001);
  }, 100);
});

console.log(response.result); // 1001

done() callback takes 2 arguments. error and the result object. You can get them as the return value of the Meteor.sync() as shown as response in the above example.

return value is an object and it has 2 fields. error and response.