7: Adding User Accounts
7.1: Password Authentication
Meteor already comes with a basic authentication and account management system out of the box, so you only need to add the accounts-password to enable username and password authentication:
meteor add accounts-passwordThere are many more authentication methods supported. You can read more about the accounts system here.
We also recommend you to install bcrypt node module, otherwise, you are going to see a warning saying that you are using a pure-Javascript implementation of it.
meteor npm install --save bcryptYou should always use
meteor npminstead of onlynpmso you always use thenpmversion pinned by Meteor, this helps you to avoid problems due to different versions of npm installing different modules.
7.2: Create User Account
Now you can create a default user for our app, we are going to use meteorite as username, we just create a new user on server startup if we didn't find it in the database.
import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';
import { Accounts } from 'meteor/accounts-base';
import { TasksCollection } from '/imports/api/TasksCollection';
import "../imports/api/TasksMethods";
const SEED_USERNAME = 'meteorite';
const SEED_PASSWORD = 'password';
Meteor.startup(async () => {
if (!(await Accounts.findUserByUsername(SEED_USERNAME))) {
await Accounts.createUser({
username: SEED_USERNAME,
password: SEED_PASSWORD,
});
}
...
});You should not see anything different in your app UI yet.
7.3: Login Form
You need to provide a way for the users to input the credentials and authenticate, for that we need a form.
Our login form will be simple, with just two fields (username and password) and a button. You should use Meteor.loginWithPassword(username, password); to authenticate your user with the provided inputs.
<template name="login">
<form class="login-form">
<div>
<label htmlFor="username">Username</label>
<input
type="text"
placeholder="Username"
name="username"
required
/>
</div>
<div>
<label htmlFor="password">Password</label>
<input
type="password"
placeholder="Password"
name="password"
required
/>
</div>
<div>
<button type="submit">Log In</button>
</div>
</form>
</template>import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';
import { Template } from 'meteor/templating';
import './Login.html';
Template.login.events({
'submit .login-form'(e) {
e.preventDefault();
const target = e.target;
const username = target.username.value;
const password = target.password.value;
Meteor.loginWithPassword(username, password);
}
});Be sure also to import the login form in App.js.
import { Template } from 'meteor/templating';
import { ReactiveDict } from 'meteor/reactive-dict';
import { TasksCollection } from "../api/TasksCollection";
import '/imports/api/TasksMethods.js'; // this import in this client UI allows for optimistic execution
import './App.html';
import './Task';
import "./Login.js";
...Ok, now you have a form, let's use it.
7.4: Require Authentication
Our app should only allow an authenticated user to access its task management features.
We can accomplish that by rendering the Login from the template when we don’t have an authenticated user. Otherwise, we return the form, filter, and list component.
To achieve this, we will use a conditional test inside our main div on App.html:
...
<div class="main">
{{#if isUserLoggedIn}}
{{> form }}
<div class="filter">
<button id="hide-completed-button">
{{#if hideCompleted}}
Show All
{{else}}
Hide Completed
{{/if}}
</button>
</div>
<ul class="tasks">
{{#each tasks}}
{{> task}}
{{/each}}
</ul>
{{else}}
{{> login }}
{{/if}}
</div>
...As you can see, if the user is logged in, we render the whole app (isUserLoggedIn). Otherwise, we render the Login template. Let’s now create our helper isUserLoggedIn:
...
const getUser = () => Meteor.user();
const isUserLoggedInChecker = () => Boolean(getUser());
...
Template.mainContainer.helpers({
...,
isUserLoggedIn() {
return isUserLoggedInChecker();
},
});
...7.5: Login Form style
Ok, let's style the login form now:
.login-form {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
height: 100%;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
}
.login-form > div {
margin: 8px;
}
.login-form > div > label {
font-weight: bold;
}
.login-form > div > input {
flex-grow: 1;
box-sizing: border-box;
padding: 10px 6px;
background: transparent;
border: 1px solid #aaa;
width: 100%;
font-size: 1em;
margin-right: 16px;
margin-top: 4px;
}
.login-form > div > input:focus {
outline: 0;
}
.login-form > div > button {
background-color: #62807e;
}Now your login form should be centralized and beautiful.
7.6: Server startup
Every task should have an owner from now on. So go to your database, as you learn before, and remove all the tasks from there:
db.tasks.remove({});
Change your server/main.js to add the seed tasks using your meteorite user as owner.
Make sure you restart the server after this change so Meteor.startup block will run again. This is probably going to happen automatically anyway as you are going to make changes in the server side code.
...
const user = await Accounts.findUserByUsername(SEED_USERNAME);
if ((await TasksCollection.find().countAsync()) === 0) {
[
"First Task",
"Second Task",
"Third Task",
"Fourth Task",
"Fifth Task",
"Sixth Task",
"Seventh Task",
].forEach((taskName) => {
Meteor.callAsync("tasks.insert", {
text: taskName,
createdAt: new Date(),
userId: user._id
});
});
}
...See that we are using a new field called userId with our user _id field, we are also setting createdAt field.
7.7: Task owner
First, let's change our publication to publish the tasks only for the currently logged user. This is important for security, as you send only data that belongs to that user.
import { Meteor } from "meteor/meteor";
import { TasksCollection } from "./TasksCollection";
Meteor.publish("tasks", function () {
let result = this.ready();
const userId = this.userId;
if (userId) {
result = TasksCollection.find({ userId });
}
return result;
});Now let's check if we have a user before trying to fetch any data:
...
Template.mainContainer.helpers({
tasks() {
let result = [];
if (isUserLoggedInChecker()) {
const instance = Template.instance();
const hideCompleted = instance.state.get(HIDE_COMPLETED_STRING);
const hideCompletedFilter = { isChecked: { $ne: true } };
result = TasksCollection.find(hideCompleted ? hideCompletedFilter : {}, {
sort: { createdAt: -1, _id: -1 },
}).fetch();
}
return result;
},
hideCompleted() {
return Template.instance().state.get(HIDE_COMPLETED_STRING);
},
incompleteCount() {
result = '';
if (isUserLoggedInChecker()) {
const incompleteTasksCount = TasksCollection.find({ isChecked: { $ne: true } }).count();
result = incompleteTasksCount ? `(${incompleteTasksCount})` : '';
}
return result;
},
isUserLoggedIn() {
return isUserLoggedInChecker();
},
});
...Also, update the tasks.insert method to include the field userId when creating a new task:
...
Meteor.methods({
"tasks.insert"(doc) {
const insertDoc = { ...doc };
if (!('userId' in insertDoc)) {
insertDoc.userId = this.userId;
}
return TasksCollection.insertAsync(insertDoc);
},
...7.8: Log out
We can also organize our tasks by showing the owner’s username below our app bar. Let’s add a new div where the user can click and log out from the app:
...
<div class="main">
{{#if isUserLoggedIn}}
<div class="user">
{{getUser.username}} 🚪
</div>
{{> form }}
...Now, let’s create the getUser helper and implement the event that will log out the user when they click on this div. Logging out is done by calling the function Meteor.logout():
...
Template.mainContainer.events({
...,
'click .user'() {
Meteor.logout();
},
});
...
Template.mainContainer.helpers({
...,
getUser() {
return getUser();
},
});
...Remember to style your username as well.
.user {
display: flex;
align-self: flex-end;
margin: 8px 16px 0;
font-weight: bold;
cursor: pointer;
}Phew! You have done quite a lot in this step. Authenticated the user, set the user in the tasks, and provided a way for the user to log out.
Your app should look like this:
In the next step, we are going to learn how to deploy your app!