E44: Meteor Hello World

The goal of this experience is to practice our “standard practice” for working with Meteor:

Create a GitHub repo.
Create and edit a Meteor app inside an app/ subdirectory in your local filespace.
Commit your app to GitHub.

Install Meteor

Warning: Meteor requires an old version of Node (v14).

As of Spring 2024, Meteor 3.0 has not been released, which means you cannot use the most recent version of Node (v20). To make the Meteor installation process easy, you should install Node using a program called Volta, which allows you to easily switch between different versions of Node.

To start, please install Volta.

Next, install Node 14.21.3 with the following command:

volta install node@14.21.3

Check that the installation was successful by opening up a terminal window and typing:

$ node --version
v14.21.3
$ npm --version
6.14.18

After installing the correct version of Node, you can install Meteor. Please read these instructions carefully.

Note for Windows users: You must run the Windows installer as Admin in order for the installer to set the PATH correctly.

Be sure to check the readings for helpful “tips” regarding Meteor.

Steps

Now, try it yourself:

Create a GitHub repo called “meteor-hello-world”.
Clone it to your local file space.
cd into your local meteor-hello-world directory.
Use meteor create meteor-hello-world to create an app called “meteor-hello-world” inside your repo.
Change the name of the meteor-hello-world subdirectory to app/.
cd into the app/ directory, run meteor run to run the app. Go to https://localhost:3000 to see the app. You can ignore the warning about subscriptions and Meteor.publish().
Create/Open an IntelliJ project called “meteor-hello-world” that points to your repo.
Edit app/imports/ui/App.jsx and check to see that Meteor restarts and refreshes the page automatically.
Commit your project to GitHub.
Check to see that your project is saved on GitHub.

Submission instructions

By the time and date indicated on the Schedule page, submit this assignment via Laulima.

Your submission should contain a link to the GitHub repository you created. Make sure you include the complete URL so that I can click on it in my mailer. Note: the final commit to this repo must have been made before the submission time and date, otherwise you will not receive credit for this assignment.

You must now grant read access to this repo to the TA for your section. To do this:

Retrieve your repository in a browser, then click on “Settings”. Depending upon the GitHub UI you are provided, you’ll then click on either “Collaborators” or “Manage Access”. Let us know if you can’t find either of these.
- If your TA is Ana, search for “acatarinaoaraujo”, then click “Add collaborator”.
- If your TA is Alyssia, search for “alyssia-chen”, then click “Add collaborator”.