updating collection with embedded objects in meteor

Question

I tried to add data from a JSON response in my collection in meteor. Unfortunately all the things I found on Stack overflow didn't work. In some cases I got an error back like:

Exception in callback of async function: MongoError: Cannot update 'plugins' and 'plugins' at the same time

and if it didn't return an error my object in my collection stayed empty like:

"plugins": {}

The code below is what resulted in an empty object, I hope someone here can help my out.

My collection consist of a field which has an object with multiple objects in it. I want them to be like this

{ 
"_id" : "id", 
"name" : "DemoSite", 
"url" : "http://someurl.com", 
"createdAt" : ISODate("2016-02-10T17:22:15.011+0000"), 
"plugins" : 
    "Akismet": {
        "pluginName" : "Akismet", 
        "currentPluginVersion" : "3.1.7", 
        "newPluginVersion" : null, 
        "lastChecked" : "Thu Feb 18 2016 15:54:02 GMT+0100 (CET)"
    }, 
    "Random Plugin": {
        "pluginName" : "Random Plugin", 
        "currentPluginVersion" : "0.1.0", 
        "newPluginVersion" : null, 
        "lastChecked" : "Thu Feb 18 2016 15:54:02 GMT+0100 (CET)"
    }
}

If my HTTP.call has no error it will do this:

var pluginData = result.data.plugins;
var dbPush = {};
if(pluginData != []){

    for (var key in pluginData){
        var obj = pluginData[key];

        var objKey = obj.Name;

        dbPush[objKey] = {
            'pluginName': objKey,
            'currentPluginVersion': obj.Version,
            'newPluginVersion': null,
            'lastChecked': new Date()
        };
        Items.update({_id: item._id}, {$set: {plugins: dbPush}});
    }
}

Also my Simple schema has this in it:

Items.attachSchema(new SimpleSchema({
name: {
    type: String,
    label: "Item name",
    min: 4,
    max: 100
},
url: {
    type: String,
    label: "Item url",
    autoform: {
        afFieldInput: {
            type: "url"
        }
    }
},
createdAt: {
    type: Date,
    optional: true,
    autoValue: function() {
      if (this.isInsert) {
        return new Date();
      }  else {
        this.unset();  // Prevent user from supplying their own value
      }
    },
    autoform: {
        afFieldInput: {
            type: "hidden"
        }
    }
},
plugins: {
    type: Object,
    optional: true
}
}));

edit

I tried to predefine all the object and then update the collection

dbPush["test"] = {
                    'pluginName': "test",
                    'currentPluginVersion': "1.0.0",
                    'newPluginVersion': null,
                    'lastChecked': new Date()
                  };
                  Items.update({_id: item._id}, {$set: {plugins: dbPush}});

Answer 1

I found a fix.

It's not a great solution but Simple Schema doesn't allows me to have custom objects in my collection. All that's needed to get this to work with my collection is the blackbox option found in the documentation here.

plugins: {
    type: Object,
    optional: true,
    blackbox: true
}

This will skip validation on the plugins object so it will store the data in the collection.

Thanks for all the help!

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure this line of code:

Items.update({_id: item._id}, {$set: {plugins: dbPush}});

Is your issue. You're looping through each plugin and updating the exact same MongoDB plugin property on the exact same item for each plugin. I think you want to build the object up beforehand and only insert once:

var pluginData = result.data.plugins;
var dbPush = {};
if(pluginData != []){

    for (var key in pluginData){
        var obj = pluginData[key];

        var objKey = obj.Name;

        dbPush[objKey] = {
            'pluginName': objKey,
            'currentPluginVersion': obj.Version,
            'newPluginVersion': null,
            'lastChecked': new Date()
        };
    }
    Items.update({_id: item._id}, {$set: {plugins: dbPush}});
}

Right now, you're looping through some amount of times and slowly building that dbPush object.