**Nova** is the new, React-based version and all development will happen on this version going forward. It's used by the [master](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/master) and [devel](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/devel) branches.
**Legacy** is the old, Blaze-powered version of Telescope and you can find it on the [legacy](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/legacy) and [legacy-devel](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/legacy-devel) branches.
Note that both versions use the same data format, so you can go back and forth between them on the same app and the same database.
On its first run, Nova seeds the site with a few dummy posts. You can remove them by opening the browser console and calling `Meteor.call('removeGettingStartedContent')` while logged in as admin.
### Example Custom Package
This repo also includes an example of how to customize Nova using a custom package. To enable the custom package, simply uncomment the line `# my-custom-package` in `.meteor/packages` (remove the `#`).
For more information on customizing Nova, refer to specific sections in this documentation. Note that **you should never customize core files directly** (files in `nova:*` packages).
Instead, either extend the object you want to customize from your own package, or disable the initial package, clone it, and modify your own copy.
If you've cloned this repo and are using **local packages** (i.e. `nova:core`, `nova:posts`, etc. are in your `/packages` directory) you'll have to pull in the changes from this repo with `git pull origin master`.
Alternatively, if Meteor can't find a package in your local `/packages` directory it will look for it in the [Atmosphere](http://atmospherejs.com) package directory. This means you can also update the app by following these steps:
To update to Nova from an earlier version of Telescope, I suggest you create a new repo and start from scratch. That being said you can use the same database seamlessly since Nova uses the same database schema.
For local development, an easy way to do that is to simply copy the `.meteor/local` directory which contains your local database to your new repo.
Settings can be configured in your `settings.json` file. For legacy compatibility reasons, settings can also be specified in your database, but note that settings specified in `settings.json` take priority over those stored in the database.
Settings can be public (meaning they will be published to the client) or private (they will be kept on the server). Public settings should be set on the `public` object. You can find a full example in `sample_settings.json`.
Just like Settings, you can specify categories either via the in-app UI or via `settings.json`. Note that if you want to delete a category, you'll have to both delete it via the UI and also remove it from `settings.json`.
Nova's codebase is split across multiple packages, with the philosophy that you should be able to add and remove packages depending on which features you actually need.
| `nova:embedly` | Get metadata (thumbnails, origin, etc.) from [Embedly](http://embed.ly) when submitting new posts. |
| `nova:forms` | Generate forms for inserting and editing documents ([README](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/nova/packages/nova-forms)). |
| `nova:getting-started` | Generate dummy content on first run. |
These are the packages that you might commonly need to customize or replace to tweak your app's layout, design, and behavior. You can either clone these packages and modify them directly, or *extend* their contents (see the [Customizing Components](#customizing-components) section.), but you should **not** modify them directly.
Nova's application structure is a bit different than most other Meteor apps. Generally speaking, we can distinguish between three ways of organizing code in a Meteor app: default, module-based, and package-based (which is what Nova uses).
The **default** app structure is what legacy Meteor apps such as [Microscope](https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/Microscope) use. Files are stored in `/client`, `/server`, `/lib`, etc. directories and imported automatically by Meteor. This approach requires the least work, but also gives you less control over load order.
Starting with Meteor 1.3, the **module-based** approach is the pattern officially recommended by the [Meteor Guide](http://guide.meteor.com/structure.html). In it, all your files are stored in an `/imports` directory, with two `/client/main.js` and `/server/main.js` entry points that then import all other files. The main difference with the previous pattern is that files in `/imports` no longer run automatically.
Finally, with the **package-based** technique, all your code is stored in [Meteor packages](http://guide.meteor.com/using-packages.html). Packages can be loaded from Meteor's package server, or stored locally in your `/packages` directory. Note that it is recommended you use modules within your packages.
When customizing Nova, you can use any of these three approaches for your own custom code. But if you can, I would recommend sticking with Nova's **package-based** approach just to maintain consistency between Nova's codebase and yours.
Also, using packages for customization means you have an easy way to turn off any customization you've added if you need to track down the source of a problem.
Apart from a couple exceptions, almost all React components in Nova live inside the `nova:base-components` package. There are two main ways of customizing them.
Components are generally defined as functional stateless components, unless they contain extra logic (lifecycle methods, event handlers, etc.) in which case they'll be defined as ES6 classes.
For components defined as ES6 classes, make sure you `extend` the original component. This will let you pick and choose which methods you actually need to replace, while inheriting the ones you didn't specify in your new component.
If a component deals with a collection (`Posts`, `Comments`, etc.) its name should start with the collection's capitalized name in plural form, followed by the component's function using camelCase formatting.
For example: `PostsShare`.
The outermost HTML element within the component will have a class of the same name, but with a dash instead: `posts-share`. If possible, classes for all other elements within the component will start with the component's class: `posts-share-button`, `posts-share-divider`, etc.
Unlike components, emails don't use React but Spacebars, a variant of the Handlebars templating language.
All email templates live in the `nova:email-templates` package. In order to register a new template or override an existing one, first you must import it as a text asset in your `package.js` file (or store it in your `/public` directory):
Out of the box, Nova has three main collections: `Posts`, `Users`, and `Comments`. Each of them has a pre-set schema, but that schema can also be extended with custom fields.
For example, this is how the `nova:newsletter` package extends the `Posts` schema with a `scheduledAt` property that keeps track of when a post was sent out as part of an email newsletter:
```js
Posts.addField({
fieldName: 'scheduledAt',
fieldSchema: {
type: Date,
optional: true
}
});
```
The `collection.addField()` function takes either a field object, or an array of fields. Each field has a `fieldName` property, and a `fieldSchema` property.
Each field schema supports all of the [SimpleSchema properties](https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-simple-schema#schema-rules), such as `type`, `optional`, etc.
A few special properties (`insertableIf`, `editableIf`, `control`, and `order`) are also supported by the [nova:forms](https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope/tree/nova/packages/nova-forms) package.
Note that Telescope provides a few utility function out of the box to use with `insertableIf` and `editableIf`:
-`Users.is.admin`: returns `true` if a user is an admin.
-`Users.is.memberOrAdmin`: returns `true` if a user is a member (i.e. has an account and is currently logged in) or an admin.
-`Users.is.ownerOrAdmin`: (editing only) returns `true` if a user is a members and owns the document being edited; or is an admin.
Additionally, the `publish` and `join` properties come from the [Smart Publications](https://github.com/meteor-utilities/smart-publications) package. Setting `publish` to true indicates that a field should be published to the client (see also next section).
You can also remove a field by calling `collection.removeField(fieldName)`. For example:
While most publications look up each field's `publish` property to figure out if they should publish it or not, some (like `posts.list` and `comments.list`) only feature a smaller subset of properties for performance reasons, and thus have their own specific list of published fields.
For example, here's how the `nova:embedly` adds the `thumbnailUrl, `media`, `soureName`, and `sourceUrl` fields to the list of published fields for the `posts.list` publication (after having defined them as custom fields):
```js
import PublicationUtils from 'meteor/utilities:smart-publications';
To load data and display it as a list of documents (or a single document), Nova uses the [React List Container](https://github.com/meteor-utilities/react-list-container) package to connect to the publications mentioned in the previous section.
In order to filter posts by category, keyword, view, etc. Nova uses a system of successive callbacks to translate filtering options into MongoDB database queries.
For example, here is how the `nova:search` package adds a callback to handle the `query` parameter:
```js
function addSearchQueryParameter (parameters, terms) {
if(!!terms.query) {
var parameters = Telescope.utils.deepExtend(true, parameters, {
The callback takes two arguments: the current MongoDB `parameters` (an object with a `selector` and `options` properties), and the `terms` extracted from the URL.
It then tests for the presence of a `query` property in the `terms`, and if it finds one it then extends the `parameter` object with a MongoDB RegEx search query.
Finally, it then returns `parameters` to pass it on to the next callback (or to the database itself if this happens to be the last callback).
The `view`, `category`, `after`, `before`, etc. URL parameters are all handled using their own similar callbacks.
You can access a dynamically generated cheatsheet of Nova's main functions at [http://localhost:3000/cheatsheet](/cheatsheet) (replace with your own development URL).
- [Post By Feed](https://github.com/xavcz/nova-post-by-feed): register RSS feeds that will be fetched every 30 minutes to create new posts automatically.
