global mongodb cursor in Meteor App - mongodb

Question

I'm trying to build an app with Meteor and I'm new to the framework.
What I want to do is have the Mongocursor that get returned in the tablets functions with the search parameter to be used in colors functions. Currently in colors I'm just getting the reactive variable again and running the Tablets.find(). But I'm going to have many other functions like this so I want to use the same Mongo cursor. Is it possible to create a global Mongo cursor from the tablets functions that will also be reactive.
The code below is my setup:
Template.tabletsList.helpers({
tablets: function() {
// read the user's last search (if any)
var query = Template.instance().query.get();
// sort options
var options = {sort: {manufacturer: 1}};
if ($.isEmptyObject(query)) {
// if the user didn't input a search just find all tablets
var tabletCursor = Tablets.find({}, options);
return tabletCursor;
}
else {
// find all tablets matching the search expression
return Tablets.find(query, options);
}
},
colors: function() {
var query = Template.instance().query.get();
if ($.isEmptyObject(query))
var allTablets = Tablets.find().fetch();
else
var allTablets = Tablets.find(query).fetch();
var color = '';
var colors = [];
allTablets.forEach(function (tablet) {
for (var i=0; i<tablet.specs.color.length; i++) {
color = tablet.specs.color[i];
if ($.inArray(color, colors) === -1) {
colors.push(color);
}
}
});
return colors.sort();
}

Answer 1

You can create a global helper:
Template.registerHelper('tablets',function(query){
var options = {sort: {manufacturer: 1}};
if ($.isEmptyObject(query)) query = {};
return = Tablets.find(query, options);
});
Then from anywhere in your code you can access this with:
var tabletCursor = UI._globalHelpers.tablets(query);
If you don't have access to query everwhere you can add it to Session or create a new reactive variable to hold it.