Meteor Haxe Externs

Externs and tools to build meteor applications using Haxe language.

This is an early version and the externs are not complete, also some of the workflows/concepts are subject to change.

Currently up-to-date:

• Meteor 1.4.2.3.
• Haxe > 3.2.0

How it works

Meteor.js has a very specific workflow designed for javascript language, some of its features are slightly modified or workaround when using Haxe.

Check out the example folder

• File Structuring

Meteor applications distribute client and server code in many source files or a single one for small apps, haxe uses classes that can be compiled to a single file or a client and a server file containing all the application logic. The examples folder contain different approaches.

• Context / namespace

In Meteor, the this keyword has a different context and properties in callbacks like: Meteor.publish(), Meteor.method(), template.helpers(), Router.route():

Template.myTemplate.helpers = {
    firstId:function () {
        return this.firstNode().id;
    }
}

Router.route('/', function () {
  this.render('MyTemplate');
});

To mimic these namespaces in a typed manner, context objects like TemplateCtx, PublishCtx, MethodCtx and RouterCtx are provided. The example above becomes:

Templace.get('myTemplate').helpers = {
    firstId:function () {
        return TemplateCtx.firstNode().id;
    }
}

Route.route('/', function () {
    RouterCtx.render('MyTemplate');
});

• Exposing collections

In meteor it's common to assign global variables when creating collections, these collections become then available from the browser console.

Players = new Mongo.Collection("players");

In Haxe its harder to create global variables, a workaround is to assign the collections to the window object.

var collection = new Collection("players");
untyped js.Browser.window["Players"] = untyped collection._collection;

TODOS

Some ideas for macros and utilities that may improve the haxe-meteor workflow in the future:

• Typed Collections like in haxe-mongoose externs.

• Expose Collections to the browser automatically on creation.

• Context Object provided in callbacks, (this objects would need to be removed during compile-time using macros) example:

Templace.get('myTemplate').helpers = {
    firstId:function (ctx:TemplateCtx) {
        return ctx.firstNode().id;
    }
}

Route.route('/', function (ctx:RouterCtx) {
    ctx.render('MyTemplate');
});

• Templates List showing available templates and type-check them using macros, something like in this article.

• ES6 modules output with modular-js

haxelib local use

Besides using Haxelib, you can use this git repos as a development directory:

haxelib dev hxmeteor path/to/folder

or use git directly

haxelib git hxmeteor https://github.com/MatthijsKamstra/hxmeteor.git

don't forget to add it to your build file

-lib hxmeteor