Is it possible to determine if a Meteor method was called by the server

Question

I have some Meteor methods and I want to secure them so that only certain users can call them from the client. However these methods are also used by the server. I am passed the userid in this.userid so I can check if the user is logged in and if they are allowed to make the call, no problem. But when I also need to call the method from the server side how do I determine that it was a server call so I can allow the method to execute. Checking that there is no this.userid to determine if its a server call allows un-authenticated users to call the method as well. I am looking for a way to determine if the method was called by the server so I can allow it and still prevent un-authenticated users from calling the method.

Meteor.methods({
  makeCoffee: function (time) {
    check(time, Number);
    if(calledByServer || (Meteor.user() && Meteor.user().profile.usertype === 'coffee dude')){
          //Makin' Coffee
    }
    else
      throw new Meteor.Error(404, "Can't find my pants");
    return "Coffee will be made at " + time;
  }

Answer 1

this.connection will be null inside a server side method if the method was not called from a client

See the this.connection docs.

Answer 2

Looks like Meteor.call can be called from server side too now: http://docs.meteor.com/#meteor_call

Original answer:

Make it like this:

makeCoffee = function (time) { //code here }

Meteor.methods({
  makeCoffeeMethod: function (time) {
    if (calledByAllowedUser())
      return makeCoffee(time);
    else
      throw new Meteor.Error(403, 'Forbidden');
  }
});

Now you can call it on server bypassing the authentication.