How to Access subscription in Template.rendered for nvd3 in Meteor

Question

I'd like to display data from a collection with a simple nvd3 discrete bar chart.

When i tried it with a local collection it worked just fine. Now i shifted the same data to a db collection but i can't get the data inside Meteor's .rendered.

Template.chartPopularWordsAll.onCreated(() => {
    let template = Template.instance();
    template.autorun(() => {
        template.subscribe('dataViewed'); // DataViewed.find()
});

Template.chartPopularWordsAll.rendered = function() {
    let data = DataViewed.find({}, {
        limit: 5,
        sort: {
            timesViewed: -1
        }
    }).fetch();

    console.log(data); // <-- this returns an empty array
}

Question: How can i access the data inside the .rendered ?

In the Meteor docs searching for '.rendered' gives no results i can only find .onRendered. Is .rendered even up-to-date or is it deprecated?

Thanks in advance!

Muff

Answer 1

I believe the issue here is that mix up autorun for subscribing and fetching:

the autorun is ran when the data changes, so it's not the subscribe that needs to be inside the autorun, but the data lookup.

try this:

Template.chartPopularWordsAll.onCreated(() => {
    let template = Template.instance();
    template.subscribe('dataViewed'); // DataViewed.find()
});

Template.chartPopularWordsAll.rendered = function() {
  template.autorun(() => {
    let data = DataViewed.find({}, {
        limit: 5,
        sort: {
            timesViewed: -1
        }
    }).fetch();

    console.log(data); // 
  }
}

If that does not work, try to not fetch on the call to data, but fetch when you need the data: the Collection.find() gives you a cursor, that is reactive, however once you fetch you get an array, which is not reactive. The Collection.find() part 'should' be reactive within the autorun, but i'm not 100% sure.