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.
For a demo, install and run the demo app.
meteor add brettle:accounts-deluxeYou will also need to install whatever login services you want to use. For example:
meteor add accounts-password
meteor add accounts-googleAlso, you will need to install and configure whatever accounts UI package(s) you want to use. For example:
meteor add accounts-uiJust install the desired packages and it should work.
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.
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.