Meteor.user() returns only its _id

Question

After logging a user in with Meteor.loginWithPassword() or creating a new one with Accounts.createUser (both client-side), I can confirm in their callbacks that Meteor.user() indeed contains all the set record's properties.

{ _id: "XXX",
  profile: {
     name: "Joe Shmoe",
     thumbnail: "http://www.YYY.com/ZZZ.jpg"
  },
  username: "joeshmoe" }

Furthermore, according to the official docs,

By default, the current user's username, emails and profile are published to the client.

So, would anyone be able to tell why when I try to access these fields in my Templates thusly

Template.login.user_name = function () {
    return (Meteor.userId() ? Meteor.user().profile.name : '')
};

it fails due to Meteor.user() only returning {_id: "XXX"} with none of its actual properties? I.e. the user is definitely logged in, but the user object suddenly lost/is hiding all of its properties.

Anyone know what the problem might be?

Many thanks.

EDIT: this happens with Meteor 0.5.4, the latest version at this time of writing. The accepted answer indeed fixes the issue; sometimes Meteor.userId() is already valid before the rest of the Object has arrived from the server. Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

It's possible that the data has not yet arrived from the server. Instead of just checking for Meteor.userId, what happens if you check for the property?

Template.login.user_name = function() {
  return Meteor.userId() && Meteor.user() && Meteor.user().profile ? Meteor.user().profile.name : "";
}

Answer 2

This has happened to me, too, using loginWithFacebook. I use this function, which has worked without problems so far:

var reallyLoggedIn = function() {
  var user = Meteor.user();
  if (!user) return false;
  else if (!user.profile) return false;
  else return true;
};