CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsmongodbmeteor
jordan
jordan

Reputation: 10742

How and where do you define your database structure in Meteor?

I am looking at the documentation for Meteor and it gives a few examples. I'm a bit confused about two things: First, where do you build the db (keeping security in mind)? Do I keep it all in the server/private folder to restrict client-side access? And second, how do I define the structure? For example, the code they show:

Rooms = new Meteor.Collection("rooms");
Messages = new Meteor.Collection("messages");
Parties = new Meteor.Collection("parties");

Rooms.insert({name: "Conference Room A"});
var myRooms = Rooms.find({}).fetch();
Messages.insert({text: "Hello world", room: myRooms[0]._id});
Parties.insert({name: "Super Bowl Party"});

I don't understand how a collection's structure is defined. Are they just able to define a collection and throw arbitrary data into it?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 719

Answers (2)

Tomasz Lenarcik
Tomasz Lenarcik

Reputation: 4880

A good practice would probably be defining your collection on both client and server with a single bit of javascript code. In other words, put the following

MyCollection = new Meteor.Collection("rooms");
// ...

anywhere but neither in the client nor in the server directory. Note that this directive alone does not expose any sensitive data to nobody.

A brand new meteor project would contain by default the insecure and autopublish packages. The former will basically allow any client to alter your database in every possible way, i.e. insert, update and remove documents. The latter will make sure that all database content is published to everyone, no matter how ridiculously this may sound. But fear not! Their only goal is to simplify the development process at the very early stage. You should get rid of these to guys from your project as soon as you start considering security issues of any kind.

As soon as the insecure package is removed from your project you can control the database privileges by defining MyCollection.allow and MyCollection.deny rules. Please check the documentation for more details. The only thing I would like to mention here is that this code should probably be considered as a sensitive one, so I guess you should put it into your server directory.

Removing the autopublish package has effect on the set of data that will be sent to your clients. Again you can control it and define privilages of your choice by implementing a custom Meteor.publish routine. This is all documented here. Here, you have no option. The code can only run in the server environment, so the best choice would be to put it in the server directory.

About your second question. The whole buzz about NoSQL databases (like mongodb) is to put as few restrictions on the structure of your database as possible. In other words, how the collections are structured is only up to you. You don't have to define no models and you can change the structure of your documents (and or remove fields) any time you want. Doesn't it sound great? :)

Upvotes: 2

Geoffrey Booth
Geoffrey Booth

Reputation: 7366

To answer your first question about where to put the new Meteor.Collection statements, they should go in a .js file in a folder accessible by both client and server, such as /collections. (With some exceptions: any collections that are never synced to the client, like server logs, should be defined inside /server somewhere; and any local collections should be defined in client code.)

As for your second question about structure: MongoDB is a document database, which by definition has no structure. Per the docs:

A database holds a set of collections. A collection holds a set of documents. A document is a set of key-value pairs. Documents have dynamic schema. Dynamic schema means that documents in the same collection do not need to have the same set of fields or structure, and common fields in a collection’s documents may hold different types of data.

You may also have heard this called NoSQL. Each document (record in SQL parlance) can have different fields. Hence, there's no place where you define initial structure for a collection; each document gets its "structure" defined when it's inserted or updated.

In practice, I like to create a block comment above each new Meteor.Collection statement explaining what I intend the structure to be for most or all documents in that collection, so I have something to refer to later on when I insert or update the collection's documents. But it's up to me in those insert or update functions to follow whatever structure I define for myself.

Upvotes: 3

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