This document discusses the GreatAlbums Meteor app, which is a proof-of-concept app for managing a collection of great albums. It uses various Meteor packages like iron:router, sacha:spin, and accounts-password. The document notes that some packages have sparse documentation and don't integrate seamlessly. It concludes by questioning what to do if a package doesn't fully cover requirements.

1. GreatAlbums
René Post
● AnnotatedJS
● Live demo: http://greatalbums.meteor.com/
● https://github.com/AnnotatedJS
● https://www.slideshare.net/AnnotatedJS/great-
albums

2. GreatAlbums App – What is it?
Kind of:
● “Broddellapje”
● Proof-of-Concept
● Boilerplate
● Distribution Package
Most important:
● A small gift back to the community

3. Broddellapje / Needlework
● UK
– A broddellapje was a practice needlework, where
you had to learn “it” in elementary school.
● NL
– Een broddellapje was een handwerkje, waar je "het"
mee moest leren op de lagere school.

4. Proof of Concept
● A short and/or incomplete realization of a
certain method or idea to demonstrate its
feasibility.
● (software development)
– A proof of technology or pilot project.

5. Boilerplate
● In computer programming, boilerplate code or
boilerplate is the sections of code that have to
be included in many places with little or no
alteration
● In my case:
– A starting point for new projects
– Easy look-up of how-to's

6. The Meteor Distribution
When building important software, whether in Meteor or with any other language or framework, good
release engineering practices are essential. You should know exactly what set of package versions your
app is using, and you should carefully monitor all of those packages for important updates.
Really, you'd like to use a combination of packages that have been not just tested individually, but tested
together, since so much of the complexity in a large software project comes not from its individual pieces
but from how they're integrated. Rather than leaving your package system to select the "best" combination
of package versions, which could change every day and could be a totally new combination that nobody
else has ever tried, you'd like to use a set of packages that has been comprehensively tested by
professional release engineers that really know the platform.
That's what the Meteor Distribution provides. Similar to a Redhat or Ubuntu distribution, the Meteor
Distribution is a set of package versions that have been tested and recommended for use together.
(source: https://www.meteor.com/projects )

7. GreatAlbums App – What is it?
revisited
● GreatAlbums is a Meteor App that manages a
collection of Great Albums
– Use 'as much' packages as relevant
– A large but not to big dataset for testing purposes
– One collection with all CRUD operations
– Only logged-in user can change the collection

8. Google: Best Meteor Packages
● Meteor #22: The Best Meteor Packages You
Must Know To Code Faster Than Ever
● 6 Must-Use Meteor Packages for (Almost) Every
Project
● What are the most useful Smart Packages for
Meteor.js

9. GreatAlbums: Main Packages Used
● iron:router
●
sacha:spin
● twbs:bootstrap
●
● aldeed:tabular
● aldeed:autoform
●
aldeed:simple-schema
● aldeed:collection2
● matb33:collection-hooks
● accounts-password
● useraccounts:bootstrap
● alanning:roles
● ongoworks:security
● chrismbeckett:toastr
● momentjs:moment

10. Some observations
● Documentation sometimes sparse
● Iron:router is almost a framework unto itself
– It get's kind of complicated
– Useraccounts depends on it
● Integration of tabular and autoform not
seamless
– Inline editing not possible
– Seperate schema's for tabular and autoform

11. Some observations – 2
● What to do when a package covers less than
100 % of requirements?
– Do not use package?
– Create a workaround?
– Modify package?
– Rewrite package?
– Change requirements?

12. GreatAlbums
René Post
● AnnotatedJS
● Blog: http://nliblog.com/
● Git: https://github.com/AnnotatedJS
● Live demo: http://greatalbums.meteor.com/