Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution. Meteor is a web development framework that simplifies programming and once it is mastered, gives the developer the power to prototype applications in just a few days and build a production app in just a few weeks. The simplicity of the framework makes maintenance a breeze as well; reorganizing and renaming files will not break your code, code is easy to keep in modules, and virtual environments are a thing of the past. The Meteor Development Group has established the shortest path for web development by producing a feature-rich framework that takes all the experience learned from other frameworks and packs it into Meteor.
While Meteor is simple because of the technical features it comes packed with, it is clear that the framework will become the status quo because of how the team behind it works. Meteor is built by a team that has been actively funded since the beginning of the project, unlike many open source frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Laravel, CakePHP, and others. This means that the people working towards building the framework actually care about it. Yet, Meteor is an open source project with an active community that has been improving the project constantly through packages or by patching the core code.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Meteor, covers the basics of Meteor web development. It will cover programming in the same languages (CoffeeScript, Stylus, and Jade), teach us about templates, helpers, and events, and show how to structure web applications.
Chapter 2, Publish and Subscribe Patterns, covers the most important part of Meteor web development—publishers and subscribers. With this chapter, you will understand how to better organize your data to publish only the information that the client requires.
Chapter 3, Front-end Patterns, covers a handful of patterns to improve your frontend code. You will learn how to keep code from repeating and keep it modular, use different kinds of variables, create custom input elements, animations, and more.
Chapter 4, Application Patterns, covers more complex patterns that help to control how data flows into the client, how to keep this data secure, and how to connect with external APIs.
Chapter 5, Testing Patterns, covers how to maintain your code. You will learn how to test all the features of the application and how to only test functions. This will ensure that your code does not break when you start moving things around in the future.
Chapter 6, Deployment, covers how to bring your application to a production environment that will work the way it is meant to work. You will learn how to activate the oplog, how to track errors, and how to set up an SSL certificate.
Meteor version 1.1.0.2 or above
A Unix system such as a Mac or Linux computer
This book is for developers who have already had an introductory course with Meteor. A basic knowledge of web development is recommended.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We are using font awesome to create some icons for our #features section as well."
A block of code is set as follows:
@import "_globals/bootstrap/custom.bootstrap.import.styl"
#products
#promoter
background: $brand-primary
height: 80%@import "_globals/bootstrap/custom.bootstrap.import.styl"
#products
#promoter
background: $brand-primary
height: 80%When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
// /_globals/client/main.styl
html, body, #__flow-root, #__flow-root > .template
height:100%Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
meteor reset
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Paste the information to the Private Key textarea."
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