28 August 2013
How to Remove All Elements from a Meteor Collection
Meteor collections have a remove() method. For example, on a Post collection, you can call
Post.remove("3WRHexCGhZdSa3H9L") // remove a post with that mongo '_id'
Post.remove({title:"How to Blog"}) // remove a post with that title
Post.remove({}) // remove every post
The catch is that you’re not allowed to call Post.remove({}) from the console. You’ll see
Error: Not permitted. Untrusted code may only remove documents by ID. [403]
You’re also not allowed to call remove({}) from any client side code. If your app accumulates a bunch of crufty data while you’re prototyping, you might be sad about this. Client side code and the console fall under the concept “Untrusted Code” introduced by Meteor in 0.5.8.
Starting in 0.5.8, client-only code such as event handlers may only update or remove a single document at a time, specified by _id.” More…
“Trusted Code” includes the server code and method code. The key to the solution is that you can call methods defined on the Meteor server from the client using the Meteor.call method. Therefore, this will work in the console
Meteor.call('removeAllPosts')
Assuming you define removeAllPosts on the server like so
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.startup(function() {
return Meteor.methods({
removeAllPosts: function() {
return Posts.remove({});
}
});
});
}
