Meteor vs. the Twitter API via wrapAsync and Twit

meteor-wrapasync.md

Twit and other Node libraries don't always quite drop into Meteor's reactive architecture right out of the box. Luckily Meteor makes adapting them super-duper easy with wrapAsync. It was so easy that I naturally tried all the more difficult ways first! Since I didn't find a nice gist or StackOverflow example, please enjoy this one.

In the template -

{{#with pos}}
  {{#if ready}}
    {{> singlePosition data }}
  {{/if}}
{{/with}}

In client.js -

Template.home.helpers({
  pos: function () {
    var ready = Meteor.subscribe('positions').ready();
    apos = Positions.findOne({}, {sort: {'submittedOn': -1}});

    if (apos && !apos.targetImg) {
      console.log('calling targetImg for ' + apos.target);
      var targetImg = Meteor.call("getTwitImg", apos.target, function(error, results) {
        if (results)
          Positions.update(apos._id, {$set: {'targetImg': results}});  
      });
    }

    return {
      data: apos,
      ready: ready
    };
  },
})

In server.js -

var T = new TwitMaker({
    consumer_key:         '...'
  , consumer_secret:      '...'
  , access_token:         '...'
  , access_token_secret:  '...'
})

var wrapGet = Meteor.wrapAsync(T.get, T);

Meteor.methods({

  getTwitImg: function(target) {
    data = wrapGet('users/show', {screen_name: target});
    if (data) {
      img_url = data['profile_image_url'];
      US.update({twitter: target}, {$set: {'targetImg': img_url}});
      return img_url;
    }
  }
  
});

Way easier than manually using bindEnvironment or Futures!