@socialize/user-model

User Model

A model for a user which contains useful methods and can be extended by other packages by extending it's prototype to add methods that add functionality that are pertinent to their purpose. For example the socialize:friendships package extends the user model to provide helpers which return friend requests and friends for the user.

This is a Meteor package with part of it's code published as a companion NPM package made to work with clients other than Meteor. For example your server is Meteor, but you want to build a React Native app for the client. This allows you to share code between your Meteor server and other clients to give you a competitive advantage when bringing your mobile and web application to market.

• Supporting The Project
• Meteor Installation
• NPM Installation
• Usage Outside Meteor
  • React Native
• Basic Usage
• Extending
• Advanced Usage

Supporting The Project

Finding the time to maintain FOSS projects can be quite difficult. I am myself responsible for over 30 personal projects across 2 platforms, as well as Multiple others maintained by the Meteor Community Packages organization. Therfore, if you appreciate my work, I ask that you either sponsor my work through GitHub, or donate via Paypal or Patreon. Every dollar helps give cause for spending my free time fielding issues, feature requests, pull requests and releasing updates. Info can be found in the "Sponsor this project" section of the GitHub Repo

Meteor Installation

This package relies on the npm package simpl-schema so when using it with meteor, you will need to make sure it is installed as well.

meteor npm install --save simpl-schema
meteor add socialize:user-model

NPM Installation

When using this package with React Native, the dependency tree ensures that simpl-schema is loaded so there's no need to install it as when using within Meteor.

npm install --save @socialize/user-model

Usage Outside Meteor

The client side parts of this package are published to NPM as @socialize/cloudinary for use in front ends outside of Meteor.

When using the npm package you'll need to connect to a server, which hosts the server side Meteor code for your app, using Meteor.connect as per the @socialize/react-native-meteor usage example documentation.

Meteor.connect('ws://192.168.X.X:3000/websocket');

React Native

When using this package with React Native there is some minor setup required by the @socialize/react-native-meteor package. See @socialize/react-native-meteor react-native for necessary instructions.

Basic Usage

Once you have installed the package using it is rather simple. Because the User class is a descendant of BaseModel, the users collection is attached to the class, so Meteor.users.findOne will return an instance of the class, and the cursor returned from Meteor.users.find will return instances of the class when iterated over.

Once you have an instance of the User class, you can then call it's methods.

let user = Meteor.user();

user.displayName(); // => "You"

user.isSelf(user); // => true

user.defaultEmail(); // => "[e-mail]"

Extending

The user model is made to be extended with custom methods, and some of the other packages in the Socialize set do this already. If you wish to extend it for your application or a package, this is made simple using BaseModel's static methods method.

First we import the User class for the environment we are developing in

// Meteor Import
import { User } from 'meteor/socialize:user-model';

// React Native Import
import { User } from '@socialize/user-model';

Then we extend the class for use in either environment.

User.methods({
    profile:function(){
        // `this` will be bound to the current User instance
        return ProfilesCollection.findOne({userId:this._id})
    }
});

Advanced Usage

The User class extends the LinkParent class provided by socialize:linkable-model. This allows you to extend the it using linkable packages such as socialize:likeable, socialize:commentable, and socialize:postable.

For example you could create a custom User class that would allow other users to add likes to it and bookmark that user as someone they are interested in.

To do this we'll first import the necessary classes depending on if we are in a Meteor or React Native environment.

// Meteor Imports
import { LikeableModel } from 'meteor/socialize:likeable';
import { User } from 'meteor/socialize:user-model';
import { LinkableModel } from 'meteor/socialize:linkable-model';

// Meteor Imports
import { LikeableModel } from '@socialize/likeable';
import { User } from '@socialize/user-model';
import { LinkableModel } from '@socialize/linkable-model';

Then we can write the rest of our code to be used in either Meteor or React Native

export class MyAwesomeUser extends LikeableModel(User){}

//attach the LikeableSchema so the likeCount can be stored on the user
MyAwesomeUser.attachSchema(LikeableModel.LikeableSchema);
//update the transform function so LikeableUser's are returned when we call find or findOne on the users collection
MyAwesomeUser.updateTransformFunction();
//register MyAwesomeUser as a LinkParent
LinkableModel.registerParentModel(MyAwesomeUser);

For a more in depth explanation of how to use this package see API.md