Emails & notifications

Today I wanted to implement contact form with validation and (alert) notification system. However, I encountered a problem with session variables.

My idea was to set Session variable which stores information about unseen alert notification and get that value after rendered template callback:

Template event:

Template.myContactTemplate.template{(
    'click .submitButton': function(e){
        var dataText = $(e.currentTarget).find('.dataText').val();

        Session.set('alertMessage', ['Email has been sent', 'success']);
        Meteor.call('sendEmail', dataText);
    }
)};

E-mail method:

Meteor.methods({
    sendEmail: function(text){
        check([text], [String]);
        this.unblock();
        Email.send({
            to: 'xyz@xyz.com',
            from: 'contactForm@xyz.com',
            subject: 'New message from contact form',
            text: text
        });
    }
});

Rendered callback:

Template.contactFormTemplate.rendered = function(){
    Meteor.defer(function(){
        var a = Session.get('alertMessage');
        if (a) {
            throwAlert(a[0], a[1]); // my custom method for alerts
            Session.set('alertMessage', null);
        }
    });
}

The code above will not work. I have noticed that email sending method somehow flush/resets our alertMessage session variable. To prevent from such behaviour and keep all variables saved let's add persistent-session package:

meteor add u2622:persistent-session

And that's it. Now our session variables are stored in the browser's localstorage (so we prevent from unwanted variable flushes).

You can discuss about this problem at this stackoverflow thread.

-- ł