full email validation on Meteor using Mandrill - mandrill

Question

I have read several SO posts about using Mandrill with Meteor.js for email validation, yet I've found a problem no others seem to face.
Ultimately, I want the verified property of a user to be set to true after clicking the email validation url. I am using Mandrill to send customized email templates containing a verification_url. I have the accounts-password and accounts-ui packages added. My code looks like this:
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.startup(function () {
Mandrill.config({
username: process.env.MANDRILL_API_USER,
key: process.env.MANDRILL_API_KEY
// port: 587, // defaults to 465 for SMTP over TLS
// host: 'smtp.mandrillapp.com', // the SMTP host
// baseUrl: 'https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/' // update this in case Mandrill changes its API endpoint URL or version
});
Accounts.config({
sendVerificationEmail: true
});
Accounts.emailTemplates.verifyEmail.html = function (user, url) {
var referralCode = Random.id();
var result;
try {
result = Mandrill.templates.render({
template_name: 'email-verification',
template_content: [],
merge_vars: [
{
name: 'SUBJECT',
content: 'my fancy subject'
},
{ name: 'EMAIL',
content: 'my fancy email'
},
{
name: 'VERIFICATION_URL',
content: 'http://localhost:3000/?ref=' + referralCode
}
]
});
} catch (error) {
console.error('Error while rendering Mandrill template', error);
}
return result.data.html;
};
});
When I create a user the verification email is correctly sent, however when I click the verification link within the email, nothing is done on the server, i.e. I look at my app's MongoDB and see on the user document still have the property verified: false. I've tried to work with onEmailVerificationLink (http://docs.meteor.com/#/full/Accounts-onEmailVerificationLink) but I get an error in the console saying onEmailVerificationLink has already been called, which happens because accounts-ui is apparently calling it for me. How do I do proper email verification in Meteor.js using Mandrill?

Answer 1

Finally figured it out. Instead of the line
content: 'http://localhost:3000/?ref=' + referralCode
I should replace it with
content: url
since Meteor is already creating the validation url for me, and passing it in through the "url" argument of the function. Clearly I didn't need referralCode either