fgm / accounts-drupal

A Meteor 1.8 accounts package using Drupal 8 or Symfony sessions

Accounts-drupal

This is an accounts package for Meteor 1.8, using Drupal 8 or pure Symfony backend sessions transparently:

• The Meteor app is configured to use a specific backend server for sessions
• Any user with a session on the backend server is automatically logged in on Meteor, without any UI-level intervention
• Switching from anonymous to authenticated (and vice-versa) on the backend server automatically refreshes the status on connected Meteor applications
• Changes in the backend user account fields and roles reflects in real-time on connected Meteor applications.
• No dependency on Drupal DDP nor any intervening ddp.js NodeJS server.

Requirements

• Meteor 1.8.x.

  • Use the latest 0.3.x version of the package to support Meteor 1.2 to 1.7.

• For the backend site:

  • either Drupal 8.0.x to 8.6.x, with the Drupal meteor module from FGM's Github, not to be confused with the existing meteor sandbox from drupal.org. Drupal 8.7.x session changes will be updated in a later version
  • or Symfony 3.4.x or 4.x, with equivalent support in a Symfony backend. Such existing code is currently only available as proprietary. Follow issue for an Open Source version of the Symfony backend

• The cookie domain for the Meteor application must be the same or a subdomain of the backend site. This is a consequence of cookie scope. Using the same domain on different IP ports works, as long as the backend cookies settings:

  • do not include the port number (included by default in Symfony)
  • do not mark the cookie as HTTPonly (marked by default in Symfony)

• If the Template package is present, Blaze helpers will be available, but that package is not a requirement.

Adding the package to your application

The package needs to be added to both the client and server parts of your Meteor application. Assuming you defined a logger instance of a Meteor-compatible logger component like filog for both sides, the setup looks like:

// (app)/package.json
// ...
  "meteor": {
    "mainModule": {
      "client": "imports/client/main.js",
      "server": "imports/server/main.js"
    }
  },
// ...

// (app)/imports/client/main.js

Meteor.startup(() => {
  // Configure a logger instance, then...
  onStartup(logger, Meteor.settings.public);
));

// (app)/imports/server/main.js

Meteor.startup(() => {
  // Configure a logger instance, then...
  onStartup(logger, Meteor.settings);
});

Updaters note after package version 0.2.6

If you disabled update buffering on the client using code like the fragment below to support Meteor 1.3.3 and later with earlier versions of this package which relied on arunoda:streams or the fgm:streams fork, this stopped being needed after version 0.2.6:

Meteor.startup(function () {
  Meteor.connection._bufferedWritesInterval = 0;
});

The package now uses rocketchat:streamer instead, so you should remove this line to take advantage of the buffered writes present since Meteor 1.3.3.

Running tests

The package can be tested once added to an application. Note that the test-packages command needs a --settings argument like a normal application launch. This can be the example settings file from the package.

cd <some parent dir>
git clone https://github.com/fgm/accounts-drupal.git
cd accounts-drupal
meteor yarn
meteor test-packages --driver-package meteortesting:mocha --settings ./example.settings.json ./  

# This will run the server-side tests and report on them. 
# Open your browser at http://localhost:3000 to observe the client-side test report.

Remember not to have anything already running on port 3000, like an actual Meteor application, to avoid IP binding conflicts.

License