Can Meteor live changes have animations?

Question

How does Meteor handle live changes? For instance I don\'t want changes to be instantaneous, but with some kind of animation of sorts. If we place the items being changed us

Answer 1

There is a workaround like this:

<template name="foo">
  ..content..
  {{bar}}
</template>

In this case Meteor will call Template.foo.bar everytime this template gets rendered. So within this function you can do all kinds of Jquery or CSS3 animations (for example by adding a class to the templates div).

Answer 2

Here is a working example of a simple animation with meteor.

The situation here is that we have a list of items. If the user clicks on any of those items the item will animate 20px to the left.

JS

//myItem
Template.myItem.rendered = function(){
  var instance = this;
  if(Session.get("selected_item") === this.data._id){
    Meteor.defer(function() {  
      $(instance.firstNode).addClass("selected"); //use "instance" instead of "this"
    });
  }
};

Template.myItem.events({
  "click .myItem": function(evt, template){
    Session.set("selected_item", this._id);
  }
});


//myItemList
Template.myItemList.helpers({
  items: function(){
    return Items.find();
  }
});

Templates

<template name="myItem">
  <div class="myItem">{{name}}</div>
</template>

<template name="myItemList">
  {{#each items}}
    {{> myItem}}
  {{/each}}
</template>

CSS

.myItem { transition: all 200ms 0ms ease-in; }
.selected { left: -20px; }

Instead of using fancy CSS you can also animate with jQuery:

Template.myItem.rendered = function(){
  if(Session.get("selected_item") === this.data._id){
    $(this.firstNode).animate({
      left: "-20px"
    }, 300);
  }
};

But then you need to remove the CSS code.

.myItem { transition: all 200ms 0ms ease-in; }
.selected { left: -20px; }

Answer 3

For CSS transitions, there are two options you can go with:

1. Reactively: the Meteor way
2. Directly: the jQuery way

Here is a working example: http://bindle.me/blog/index.php/658/animations-in-meteor-state-of-the-game