brettle:accounts-deluxe

Give all visitors anonymous accounts to which they can add a login service with popular accounts UI packages like accounts-ui and useraccounts:bootstrap.

This package just includes the other brettle:accounts-* packages so you don't need to add each one separately. See the Details section for a brief description of the individual packages.

Demo

For a demo, install and run the demo app.

Installation

meteor add brettle:accounts-deluxe

You will also need to install whatever login services you want to use. For example:

meteor add accounts-password
meteor add accounts-google

Also, you will need to install and configure whatever accounts UI package(s) you want to use. For example:

meteor add accounts-ui

Usage

Just install the desired packages and it should work.

Details

This package just includes the other brettle:accounts-* packages so you don't need to add each one separately. If you want finer control, then add just the packages that provide the features you want. Here is brief description of each of the packages and the features they provide. Follow the links for more information.

brettle:accounts-anonymous-auto - Automatically creates anonymous accounts for new visitors to ensure that an account is always associated with the current user.

brettle:accounts-patch-ui - Monkey patches accounts UI packages to treat users who have logged in but not signed up (e.g. anonymous users) like logged out users so that they can sign up and sign in.

brettle:accounts-add-service - Allows users (anonymous or otherwise) to add login services to their accounts.

brettle:accounts-logout-to-switch - Requires that signed up users logout before they login to another existing account.

brettle:accounts-anonymous - Provides a way to create anonymous accounts but does not automatically create the for new visitors. The brettle:accounts-anonymous-auto package uses this package.

brettle:accounts-login-state - Tracks the current user's login state and allows applications and packages to register callbacks that help determine whether a user has signed up. The brettle:accounts-patch-ui and brettle:accounts-logout-to-switch packages uses this package.

brettle:accounts-multiple - Provides hooks for handling the case where a logged in user attempts to login using a different service. The brettle:accounts-add-service, brettle:accounts-logout-to-switch, and brettle:accounts-anonymous packages use this package.

FAQ

Note: The answers below contain my personal opinions on related packages by other developers. I reviewed those packages and sometimes contributed to them before or while working on the brettle:accounts-* suite. I based the techniques that I use on these what I saw in these other packages or lessons I learned from them, so I sincerely appreciate that the developers took the time to create them and open source them. If you are a developer of one of the packages I mention and feel that my comments mis-characterize you or your package, please let me know via PR, issue, or personal email, and I'll do my best to fix it. Thanks!

How are `brettle:accounts-anonymous`, `brettle:accounts-anonymous-auto`, and `brettle:accounts-patch-ui` different from [artwells:accounts-guest](https://atmospherejs.com/artwells/accounts-guest)?

The artwells:accounts-guest package provides guest accounts, supports using accounts-ui, and optionally provides automatic sign-in and deletion of old guest accounts.

As of 0.1.12, artwells:accounts-guest provides guests accounts by using accounts-password to create users with randomly generated email addresses and passwords. That means that if you want to allow guest users and sign-in using an OAuth service but not don't want to support password based login, you will need to change whatever UI package you use so that it doesn't give the user the option to register with a password. A future release of artwells:accounts-guest will include code I contributed to support truly anonymous users like those provided by brettle:accounts-anonymous (i.e. without requiring accounts-password).

The artwells:accounts-guest package supports using accounts-ui, while brettle:accounts-patch-ui supports using either accounts-ui or the useraccounts:* suite. Also, artwells:accounts-guest supports accounts-ui by overriding the {{currentUser}} helper globally so that it returns null when the user is a guest. This causes the loginButtons template to display the "Sign In" link to guest users, but it also means that any other templates that use the {{currentUser}} helper will not be able access guest users. The brettle:accounts-patch-ui package takes a different approach. It overrides the {{currentUser}} helper solely in the loginButtons template. Changing artwells:accounts-guest to do the same thing might cause backward-compatibility issues for any applications that rely on the current global behavior.

The artwells:accounts-guest package supports automatic sign-in with a configuration option, while brettle:accounts-anonymous-auto provides this feature in a separate package.

The artwells:accounts-guest package provides direct support for removing old guest accounts. The brettle:accounts-* suite does not provide any direct support for such a feature, taking the position that it's simple enough and app-specific enough that it doesn't warrant inclusion in a package.

The brettle:accounts-* suite started as a friendly fork of artwells:accounts-guest driven by a desire to forgo backward compatibility concerns and a desire to split the package into brettle:accounts-anonymous, brettle:accounts-anonymous-auto, and brettle:accounts-patch-ui. That said, if you use a future release of artwells:accounts-guest configured to create truly anonymous guest accounts, those accounts should work with the rest of the brettle:accounts-* suite just like the accounts created by brettle:accounts-anonymous.

How is `brettle:accounts-add-service` different from [`splendido:accounts-meld`](https://atmospherejs.com/splendido/accounts-meld), [`mondora:connect-with`](https://atmospherejs.com/mondora/connect-with), and [`bozhao:link-accounts`](https://atmospherejs.com/bozhao/link-accounts)?

The splendido:accounts-meld package is closest to brettle:accounts-add-service, and which is best depends on your particular requirements. The splendido:accounts-meld package supports adding any OAuth service to an existing account and combining accounts that have the same verified email address. The brettle:accounts-add-service package supports adding any login service, OAuth or non-OAuth (e.g. accounts-password), but does not support combining accounts that have the same verified email address. If a user attempts to add a service using the credentials of another user, the brettle:accounts-add-service will sign the user in to the other account, or, if you have installed brettle:accounts-logout-to-switch, it will tell the user to sign out before signing in is as the other user. Neither package will combine the two accounts. If you want that functionality, you should consider using splendido:accounts-meld.

The mondora:connect-with package allows you to add any OAuth service to an account, but like splendido:accounts-meld it does not support non-OAuth services. Also, unlike splendido:accounts-meld, it requires the client to call Meteor.linkWithService instead of Meteor.loginWithService to add the service. This means that you need to provide your own UI for adding services. With either splendido:accounts-meld or brettle:accounts-add-service, you can use the useraccounts suite to get a ready-made UI for adding (and removing) services.

The bozhao:link-accounts has the same drawbacks as mondora:connect-with but it does not support arbitrary OAuth services. Support for individual OAuth services is hard-coded into the package.

Why monkey patch the [`useraccounts`](https://atmospherejs.com/useraccounts/core) suite?

I would prefer if the useraccounts suite treated anonymous users as signed out users, so I submitted a feature design to see whether @splendido would consider a PR adding that functionality. He replied that he is (understandably) focused on finishing version 2 of the useraccounts suite and would rather not add PRs to version 1 at this point. Since I wanted to support version 1 of useraccounts, that meant that I could either fork the entire useraccounts suite (which consists of 14 packages, one per UI framework and then some) or I could release a package that monkey patches the handful of packages in the useraccounts suite that need changing to treat anonymous users as signed out users. I opted for the latter route.