Unable to create Documents collection in meteor

Question

Trying to create a collection called "documents" and insert a document from main.js in my meteor application. When trying to execute the findOne method in the console window I get "Uncaught ReferenceError: Documents is not defined". I am using meteor version 1.10.2. I have mongo installed on my computer and its mongo shell version is 4.2.1. How do I enable my app to use mongo?

main.js

import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';
import { Mongo } from 'meteor/mongo';

Meteor.startup(() => {
  // code to run on server at startup

  this.Documents = new Mongo.Collection("documents");

  if(!Documents.findOne()) {
    Documents.insert({title:"my new documents"});
  }

});

Answer 1

Documents is not defined because you assigned the collection to this.documents Just define Documents like a normal variable

import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';
import { Mongo } from 'meteor/mongo';

const Documents = new Mongo.Collection("documents");

if(!Documents.findOne()) {
  Documents.insert({title:"my new documents"});
}

export { Documents }

---

To access Documents in the console, you need to import the module into the console (like you would in a file), except in the console, you do this with require :

require('/path/to/main').Documents

Note: this is only possible when Documents is exported

Alternatively, you can make it global by assigning it to window or global :

const Documents = new Mongo.Collection("documents");
window.Documents = Documents;

With globals you just need to be careful not to name other variables with the same name so you know what object you're handing