How can I place my Meteor apps version number in the UI?

Question

I have a meteor application that has different branches for different clients. This is because clients want special things. Of course right?

I would like to be able to place the git branch and tag/hash for the deployed version of the app for that client in the UI somewhere.

The question is how? Is there a way in Meteor to get this information and simply use it?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use Meteor.gitCommitHash on both client and server.

Answer 2

For the most part I liked Kuba's answer and I actually tried to use his node script but ran in to problems with the promise library. Anyway, I wrote my own post-commit bash script and I think it's cleaner and easier like this.

ver=$(git describe --abbrev=0)
complete=$(git describe)
branch=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)
commit=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
timestamp=$(git log -1 --date=short --pretty=format:%cd)
cat > private/version.json << EOF
{
    "basic": "$ver",
    "complete": "$complete",
    "branch": "$branch",
    "commit": "$commit",
    "timestamp": "$timestamp"
}
EOF

I agree with everything else in Kuba's answer on where to store the file and how to access it in the server.

Answer 3

In my production apps I solved this issue in this way:

Files

App/.git/hooks/post.commit

App/MeteorApp/hooks/post-commit-version

App structure:

App
  .git
     hooks
       post-commit (file)
  MeteorApp
    client
    server
    both
    private
      version.json
    hooks
      post-commit-version (file)

Whenever developer commits code .git/hooks/post-commit is executed which executes nodejs script stored in App/MeteorApp/hooks/post-commit-version.

Script post-commit-version generates version.json in App/MeteorApp/private dir in format:

{
  "timestamp": "29-08-2014 23:16",
  "branch": "master",
  "commit": "3332f6dcbde57105a8dc353e5e878651cab89856"
}

Everything stored in private is accessible to server on production.

How to display version.json in app ?

App/MeteorApp/both/collections/Version.js:

Version = new Meteor.Collection('version');

App/MeteorApp/server/startup.js

Meteor.startup(function(){
    if (Version.find().count() > 0){
        Version.remove({});
    }
    Version.insert(JSON.parse(Assets.getText("version.json")));
})

After application is deployed it will fire startup callbacks and version will be inserted to collection Version.

App/MeteorApp/server/publish/version.js:

Meteor.publish('version', function () {
  return Version.find();
});

App/MeteorApp/client/startup.js:

Meteor.startup(function(){
  Meteor.subscribe("version");
})

And then somewhere in template simply create helper:

Template.template_name.helpers({
  version:function(){
   return Version.findOne();
  }
})

In template_name you display version using {{version.commit}} {{version.branch}} {{version.timestamp}}.

Side note 1

Script post-commit-version don't have js extension, because I don't want meteor to include it in bundle or reload app in development every time I change this file. However it is possible to use post-commit-version.js when that file is stored in .dir (like App/MeteorApp/.hooks) as directories having . as first character are not processed by meteor.

Side note 2

Another possibility would be load version.json on server side Meteor.startup, parse json and attach to global variable like App.version. Later use it with Meteor.method:

Meteor.methods({
  getVersion:function(){
   return App.version;
  }
})

On client you simply call method:

Meteor.call("getVersion", function(error,version){
  if(error)  {
    throw new Error("Cannot get version");
    return;      
  }

  Session.set("version",version)
})

Some template's helper could use it :

Template.template_name.helpers({
  version:function(){
    return Session.get("version");
  }
})

Answer 4

I just wrote a package for that and published it on Atmosphere. The package comes with an Template-Helper to show your git commit hash, tag or branch just like this:

<div>
  <p>short hash: {{gitRev 'short'}}</p>
  <p>long hash: {{gitRev 'long'}}</p>
  <p>tag: {{gitRev 'tag'}}</p>
  <p>branch: {{gitRev 'branch'}}</p>
</div>

See atmospherejs.com/johdirr/meteor-git-rev for details.