Meteor Reactive Methods

Call methods synchronously inside Tracker.autorun.

Deprecated: Please fork this package if you would like to continue to work on it, and I'd happily link to it!

Install with meteor add simple:reactive-method

Sometimes, you want to call a Meteor method inside of a template helper or Tracker.autorun computation, and get a return value. Now you can!

Before (doesn't work)

Template.foo.helpers({
   methodResult: function () {
       Meteor.call("myMethod", "a", "b", function (err, result) {
           return result; // this doesn't work!!!
       });
   } 
});

After (works!)

Template.foo.helpers({
    methodResult: function () {
        // Super fun!
        return ReactiveMethod.call("myMethod", "a", "b");
        
        // Can also use 'apply' style
        // return ReactiveMethod.apply("myMethod", ["a", "b"]);
    }
});

Method results are updated every time their arguments change

Be careful! If you pass something like Random.id() or new Date() as one of the arguments, you will cause an infinite loop where the method is called infinitely over and over. If you don't want your method call to re-run on every argument change, try this other package: https://atmospherejs.com/mnmtanish/call

Invalidating method calls

Sometimes, you want to force a reactive method to get a new value from the server, even though the arguments are the same. In that case, use ReactiveMethod.invalidateCall or ReactiveMethod.invalidateApply, like so:

// Will cause the helper above to rerun
ReactiveMethod.invalidateCall("myMethod", "a", "b");