Merging collections in Meteor

Question

Imagine you have multiple collections you want displayed on a single social news feed, for example Posts and Users (new signups). How would you rea

Answer 1

By far the easiest solution is to merge them on the client in a template helper. For example:

Template.dashboard.helpers({
  peopleAndPosts: function() {
    var people = People.find().fetch();
    var posts = Posts.find().fetch();
    var docs = people.concat(posts);
    return _.sortBy(docs, function(doc) {return doc.createdAt;});
  }
});

and the template (assuming people and posts have a name):

This will be reactive because the helper is a reactive context so any changes to People or Posts will cause the returned array to be recomputed. Be aware that because you are not returning a cursor, any changes to either collection will cause the entire set to render again. This won't be a big deal if the length of the returned array is relatively short.