meteor/docs/client/basic/sections/packages.md

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Packages

All of Meteor's functionality is implemented in modular packages. In addition to the core packages documented above, there are many others that you can add to your app to enable useful functionality.

From the command line, you can add and remove packages with meteor add and meteor remove:

# add the less package
meteor add less

# remove the less package
meteor remove less

Your app will restart itself automatically when you add or remove a package. An app's package dependencies are tracked in .meteor/packages, so your collaborators will be automatically updated to the same set of installed packages as you after they pull your source code, because they have the same .meteor/packages file as you.

You can see which packages are used by your app by running meteor list in the app's directory.

Searching for packages

Currently the best way to search for packages available from the official Meteor package server is Atmosphere, the community package search website maintained by Percolate Studio. You can also search for packages directly using the meteor search command.

Packages that have a : in the name, such as mquandalle:jade, are written and maintained by community members. The prefix before the colon is the name of the user or organization who created that package. Unprefixed packages are maintained by Meteor Development Group as part of the Meteor framework.

There are currently over 2000 packages available on Atmosphere. Below is a small selection of some of the most useful packages.

accounts-ui

This is a drop-in user interface to Meteor's accounts system. After adding the package, include it in your templates with {{dstache}}> loginButtons}}. The UI automatically adapts to include controls for any added login services, such as accounts-password, accounts-facebook, etc.

See the docs about accounts-ui above..

coffeescript

Use CoffeeScript in your app. With this package, any files with a .coffee extension will be compiled to JavaScript by Meteor's build system.

email

Send emails from your app. See the email section of the full API docs.

mquandalle:jade

Use the Jade templating language in your app. After adding this package, any files with a .jade extension will be compiled into Meteor templates. See the page on Atmosphere for details.

jquery

JQuery makes HTML traversal and manipulation, event handling, and animation easy with a simple API that works across most browsers.

JQuery is automatically included in every Meteor app since the framework uses it extensively. See the JQuery docs for more details.

http

This package allows you to make HTTP requests from the client or server using the same API. See the http docs to see how to use it.

less

Add the LESS CSS preprocessor to your app to compile any files with a .less extension into standard CSS. If you want to use @import to include other files and not have Meteor automatically compile them, use the .import.less extension.

markdown

Include Markdown code in your templates. It's as easy as using the {{dstache}}# markdown}} helper:

<div class="my-div">
{{dstache}}#markdown}}
# My heading

Some paragraph text
{{dstache}}/markdown}}
</div>

Just make sure to keep your markdown unindented, since whitespace matters.

underscore

Underscore provides a collection of useful functions to manipulate arrays, objects, and functions. underscore is included in every Meteor app because the framework itself uses it extensively.

spiderable

This package gives your app server-side rendering to allow search engine crawlers and other bots see your app's contents. If you care about SEO, you should add this package.

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