Meteor: insert only working on client, not persisting in server side database

Question

I am trying to insert a document into an Activities collection every time a user executes an action. Here is how I set it up:

Here is my createActivity Meteor.method within collections/activities.coffee :

@Activities = new Mongo.Collection('activities')

Activities.allow
  insert: (userId, activity) ->
    activity.userId == userId

Meteor.methods
  createActivity: (movieId, userId) ->
    # if Meteor.isServer
    #   timer = Stats.createTimer("methods.createActivity")
    Activities.insert {
      docId: movieId
      userId: userId
      action: "favorite"
      collection: "movies"
      createdAt: new Date
    }, (error, results) ->
      console.log error, results
    return

Here is where it gets called, in another collection-- collections/lists.coffee . It is getting called within another Meteor.method which gets called on a click event

Meteor.methods
  toggleFavorited: (movieId) ->
    if Meteor.isServer
      timer = Stats.createTimer("methods.toggleFavorited")
    user = Meteor.user()
    return unless user?
    favorited = Meteor.call('toggleInList', user.favorites, movieId)
    if favorited
      Meteor.call 'createActivity', movieId, Meteor.userId()  #LOOK HERE !!!!!
      Movies.update({mid: movieId}, {$inc: favorites: 1})

    else
      Movies.update({mid: movieId}, {$inc: favorites: -1})
    if Meteor.isServer
      timer.stop()
    favorited

Here is my publication and subscription: server/publications.coffee

Meteor.publish 'activities', ->
  return Activities.find()

lib/router.coffee

Router.configure
  layoutTemplate: 'layout'
  loadingTemplate: 'loading'
  notFoundTemplate: 'notFound'
  trackPageView: true
  waitOn: ->
    [
      Meteor.subscribe("activities")
    ]

Here is the console log from when I do the user action that triggers the Activties insert method:

But the document isn't persisted in the database! Why is that?

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Are you able to share your folder structure, potentially your method is defined somewhere that meteor thinks is only client-specific code which may explain why it is not getting executed on the server.

My project has the following folders:

/client/
/both <-- accessible to both client & server
/server <-- looks like you have this, server only code.

If you don't, maybe try moving the method code to a /both/lib folder and see if it gets run on the server.

Answer 2

How did you define your collection? Did you by any chance pass null as the argument?

Activities = new Mongo.Collection(null)

will create a local Collection which is not persisted

Activities = new Mongo.Collection("activities")

will be persisted on the server