Using Ember.js with DDP / Meteor backend

Question

After past experience with Laravel and Backbone, I've recently gotten into contact with Ember.js and Meteor (for different projects). I really like Ember.js for its structured, route-based approach and for its open and forward-thinking community. On the other hand, I really like Meteor for its simplicity; how fast you can get something working.

There is one thing that I really love about Meteor, which is the DDP Protocol. The reason I ended up using Meteor for a project was because I wanted the best Websocket solution, and DDP's simple combination of RPC for client->server and PubSub for server->client is absolutely brilliant.

Would it be possible to connect Ember.js with a Meteor backend, and how would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

There's some work done for AngularJs: https://medium.com/@zfxuan/the-wonderful-duo-using-meteor-and-angularjs-together-4d603a4651bf

The best option that you have currently for Emberjs is to create your own solution.

I've a background in AngularJs but I don't like the idea of using AngularJs + Meteor. The same goes for Emberjs or any other frameworks that are redundant. By adding AngularJS/Ember/others you're increasing your project complexity. Meteor is great because every plays nice together but there is still a lot of work to be done by the MDG or by community packages.

You can simply use DDP in your application but then you're going to reinvent the wheel. Meteor already handles DDP, in-browser database (minimongo), the UI is reactive (Blaze), the auth system is integrated at the client and server, etc, etc, etc.

You can use 3rd party plugins with your Meteor app but trying to replace parts that Meteor already provides is the quickest way to have a really hard project to maintain. But, in the end, it's just my opinion on this topic and you should use whatever makes you happy.

Maybe you should consider sails.js: http://sailsjs.org/ it has support for SQL systems and probably serves best your purpose.

Answer 2

You can indeed connect other apps to a meteor backend without using meteor on the client.

Meteor has a full wiki page on different libraries. I think that is the most up to date source for information on libraries to connect to a DDP meteor backend.

A link to the JavaScript section: http://meteorpedia.com/read/DDP_Clients#JavaScript