Redirecting not logged-in users with iron-router... Again

Question

I am fighting with the common need for redirecting a user to a login page if he is not logged-in (Meteor v0.8.0 on Windows 7).

There are several similar questions on stackoverflow, but no answer seems to work for me.

Won't work #1: render()

From the documentation:

onBeforeAction: function () {
  if (!Meteor.user()) {
    // render the login template but keep the url in the browser the same
    this.render('login');

    // stop the rest of the before hooks and the action function 
    this.stop();
  }
},

Two issues here:

1- The documentation is outdated. There is no this.stop() function anymore. As stated here, the code should be :

onBeforeAction: function (pause) {
  if (!Meteor.user()) {
    // render the login template but keep the url in the browser the same
    this.render('login');

    // stop the rest of the before hooks and the action function 
    pause();
  }
},

2- This works only if the route has no layoutTemplate. If it has one, the login template is rendered in the {{>yield}} of the layoutTemplate. This is usually not what you want for a login page.

Won't work #2: Router.go() or this.redirect()

Defining a route for the login page sounds like the natural way. You can then do:

Router.onBeforeAction(function(pause) {
    if (!Meteor.user()) {
        pause();
        Router.go('\login');
    }
}, {except: ['login']});

Or:

Router.onBeforeAction(function() {
    if (!Meteor.user())
        this.redirect('\login');
}, {except: ['login']});

But strangely, there is still an issue if the original route (before redirect) has a layoutTemplate: the /login template is rendered inside the {{yield}}. Which again is not what you usually want (and definitely not what you expect, as the /login template has no layoutTemplate defined).

I found a way to partially solve this:

Router.onBeforeAction(function() {
    if (!Meteor.user()) {
        var that = this;
        setTimeout(function() { that.redirect('\login'); }, 0);
    }
}, {except: ['login']});

Now everything is fine: the /login template renders as a clean page... Except that the layoutTemplate of the original route briefly blinks before the /login template is displayed.

Have you got this same problem?

Answer 1

Ok, so it seems that the render function on a route only renders a template into the current layout. To render a template into a different layout you have to call this.setLayout('templateName'). The one caveat seems to be that you'll need to set the layout back after login.

onBeforeAction: function(pause) {
    var routeName = this.route.name;

    if (_.include(['login'], routeName))
        return;

    if (! Meteor.userId()) {
        this.setLayout("newLayout");
        this.render('login');

        //if you have named yields it the login form
        this.render('loginForm', {to:"formRegion"});

        //and finally call the pause() to prevent further actions from running
        pause();
    }else{
        this.setLayout(this.lookupLayoutTemplate());
    }
}

You could also just render the login template as the layout if your login template is all you need by calling this.setLayout('login')