How to let an admin change user properties in Meteor? - database

Question

Are there any special hoops one has to jump through when modifying user objects in Meteor? I have no problem changing other collections but the users are strangely and persistently resistant to the many suggestions I have found.
I can see that there are some user attributes such as profile that are published and presumably quite easy to change. I need more control over the access so just bunging my data into user.profile won't do. At the moment I'm trying to give users a grant table, so that for example I can write:
var user = Meteor.users.findOne();
var may_eat_popcorn = user.grants.popcorn;
This works:
$ meteor shell
// First check that the user is not allowed to eat popcorn:
> Meteor.users.findOne({_id:"iCTnpqwCR6jj9xxxx"});
....
grants: { popcorn: false } }
// Give the non-gender specific entity access to popcorn:
> Meteor.users.update({_id:"iCTnpqwCR6jj9xxxx"},{$set:{"grants.popcorn":true}}, function(err,res){console.log("grant:",err,res);});
> Meteor.users.findOne({_id:"iCTnpqwCR6jj9xxxx"});
....
grants: { popcorn: true } }
// Hooray.
This doesn't, even though equivalent code works fine with other collections:
Meteor.methods(
{ User_grant_popcorn: function(userId, granted){
// authentication. Then:
var grants = {"grants.popcorn": granted};
console.log(userId,grants);
Meteor.users.update({_id:userId},{$set:grants}, function(err,res){console.log("grant:",err,res);});
// This callback prints that there is no error, yet the database doesn't change on the server.
}
});
// On the client the admin picks the target user and sets their degree of pop:
Meteor.call('User_grant_popcorn', user._id, false);
Do you know how user is different? More importantly, how can I debug issues like this? Winning means getting awesome things done fast. That's meteor's promise. If debugging takes this long the advantage is lost.
Many thanks, Max

Answer 1

Programmatically create $set
Meteor.methods({
User_grant_popcorn: function(userId, granted) {
// authentication. Then:
var grants = {
"grants.popcorn": granted
};
var setHash = {
$set: grants
};
console.log(userId, grants);
Meteor.users.update({_id: userId}, setHash, function(err, res) {
console.log("grant:", err, res);
});
// This callback prints that there is no error, yet the database doesn't change on the server.
}
});