Meteor publish and subscribe not working

Question

I have a fairly novice question and am hoping someone can help me.

I have the following code in which subscribe/publish is not working:

if (Meteor.isServer) {

  Meteor.publish('items', function () {
     return Items.find({});
   });

}


if (Meteor.isClient) {
  Meteor.subscribe("items");

}

In my template:

<template name="items">

  <div class="ui segment">
   <div class="ui relaxed list">
     {{#each item in items}}
     <div class="item">
        <img class="ui avatar image" src="http://placehold.it/20x20">
           <div class="content">
             <a class="header">{{item.text}} 

           </div>
           <button class="delete">&times;</button>
      </div>
      {{/each}}
   </div>
  </div>

</template>

But nothing gets output. However when I add:

 Template.items.helpers({
      items: function () {
        return Items.find({});
      }
    });

I do see the list properly. Why is this so? Also I am clearly confused as to why someone would want to use subscribe/publish along with the template helpers.

DSK DSK · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-04T00:58:38

You must subscribe() using the same name as used in the publish(). In your case (pay attention to 'items'):

/server:

Meteor.publish('items', function () {
   return Items.find({});
});

/client:

if (Meteor.isClient) {
  Meteor.subscribe('items');
}

The publish/subscribe link is telling meteor to send all docs in the 'Items' collection to minimongo on the client. Now, the purpose of the template helper is to tell meteor that you want to reactively update the template any time a document changes in Items.

A good reference on the subject: https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/understanding-meteor-publications-and-subscriptions/

Meteor publish and subscribe not working

2 Answers