9 Books to Get You Started with Meteor Development

Meteor is probably one of the most rich frameworks to enter the market ever since AngularJS made its debut. I remember trying Meteor out for the first time, back in late 2014 — have to say that I was instantly hooked on the way it allowed to build fast and modern websites on the fly, it’s one of those rare occasions where a framework actually inspires you to want to pursue it more, to want to build something cool.

Meteor.js is a cohesive development platform, a collection of libraries and packages that are bound together in a tidy way to make web development easier. It builds on ideas from previous frameworks and libraries to offer an easy way to start a prototype app, but it gives you the tools and flexibility to build a full fledged production app. There are libraries like Tracker and Blaze that the Meteor Development Group has built specifically for a reactive front-end experience. — Source

While the framework is still only in its initial 1.* release pattern, tutorials and books are slowly beginning to emerge on a larger scale, and many of the already available books have been perfected to reflect the latest changes and possibilities within the Meteor framework. Lets take a look at all the publicly available books today.

1. Discover Meteor

The Discover Meteor books is written by Tom Coleman and Sacha Greif, one of the two most aspiring Meteor developers out there, heavily involved with the community and as you can see — they’ve managed to give back in a big way. The book itself complements all the default (documentation) learning material that you get with Meteor straight away, and the main objective of the book is to build a Reddit like application that performs equally on both web and mobile. Tons of insights and learning material, with the ability to purchase more chapters to dive into stuff such as how API’s work with Meteor.

2. Meteor in Action

Already the community members have jumped into the comment section to discuss this post and the books that were initially listed on it, it has come to my attention that a few books are better to be replaced with more modern and up-to-date alternatives, so here goes.

Meteor in Action is a super-insightful Meteor book written by Manuel Schoebel and Stephan Hochhaus, even though it currently comes only in digital format, a print version is also being prepared. Inside, you will find details chapters of how to use the Meteor platform, how to utilize the reactivity features to their full potential, how to maximize the usage potential of Meteor templates, even an individual chapter on how to use the Meteor packages.

Certainly a lot of “how to” problems are being solved with this book, and while I’ve yet to dive deep inside of it myself, I trust the recommendations that have been given in the comment box, let us know if there are more of these types of books out there.

3. Building Single-page Web Apps with Meteor

Meteor is highly known for being a great framework to work with when it comes to Building Single-page Web Apps with Meteor, many mobile developers choose this framework for that very reason. Plus, it’s a load of fun. In this book, you’ll be learning a few things, including:

• How to build reactive templates that will auto-update upon any data changes.
• How to work with the database on both client and server to manipulate data.
• How to utilize data synchronization using a publication/subscription model and make API’s obsolete.
• How to build your own advanced reactive objects and make everything rerun when you want.

and a lot more, it’s definitely a book that takes a technical approach to Meteor and single-page apps.

4. Meteor Tutorial

I’ve always encouraged authors to leave their own work in the comments, and Matthew Platts has done exactly that. Here is his book dubbed “Meteor Tutorial” which Matt says; will teach you how to develop and deploy production ready Meteor applications for both web and mobile. I like that the chapters are deeply divided into smaller sub-sections, which really allows to absorb all the information and content learned.

5. Meteor Cookbook

Welcome to the Meteor Cookbook; a FAQ and tutorial culled and currated from over 12 months of emails and discussions from the Meteor Talk google group and my experiences rolling out packages and apps. We’ve already discussed about learning communities before, and this particular cookbook is great proof how useful these communities can be.

6. Testing with Meteor

Testing with Meteor is one of the most important aspects of building web applications, especially if we want them to scale. Far too many programmers and developers leave testing out, only to realize that it is already too late. The book chapters are still being written, but a few chapters already have been made available. Definitely worth a purchase and support!

7. Meteor Explained – A Journey Into Meteor’s Reactivity

Meteor Explained – A Journey Into Meteor’s Reactivity is known to be dynamic, reactive and to be of blazing fast speeds. But how does it achieve all that? Where is the secret? This book goes deep into aspects of Meteor’s reactivity to give you a glimpse of how all that magnificence is achieved. No prior programming experience is necessary to understand what the book conveys.

8. Your First Meteor Application

I’m pretty sure you can get this book for free at the official website, since I remember that this was also my first book when I started out with Meteor. To tell you the truth, it’s a really good book, it gets you through the chapters very quickly, and you can piece everything together rather easily, but in the end you realize that the book wasn’t enough and you crave for more, which actually turns out to be a good thing — since now we’ve got so many other options to choose from.

Your First Meteor Application is an great book that covers all the basic Meteor functions and features, highly recommended.

9. Bulletproof Meteor – Build Fast and Efficient Meteor Apps

BulletProof is a very balanced e-learning class on Meteor, focused on performance. You can do chunks of it, jump around between classes, and focus on what you currently need. The combination with working through a lesson with hints in it, and the class requiring you to code in a cloned repository, is a combination that works great for me. I actually learn and remember. — a review that one of the BulletProof readers left on the site. It’s definitely a great book, and once again — highly recommended.

Books to Get You Started with Meteor Development

I’m sure that in the coming months we’re going to see a few more additions to this catalog of Meteor books, but for now we’ve got enough to cover our needs for both beginner and intermediate level understanding of Meteor, even then — to become an expert, one should invest time in getting to know the ins and outs of Meteor, as contributing to the project is totally acceptable.