Say we have a Meteor collection called Student.

model.js

Student = new Meteor.Collection('student');

So i would like to have some predefined students if the collection is emtpy. So i prepare the student.json in the private folder.

private/student.json

{
  "student":
  [
    { "_id": "1", "name": "Peter" },
    { "_id": "2", "name": "Jack" },
    { "_id": "3", "name": "Mary" },
    { "_id": "4", "name": "Sam" },
    { "_id": "5", "name": "Ann" },
  ]
}

Continue reading Meteor – Insert Sample Data if the MongoDB is empty →

If you start a new Meteor app, it would initialize a local MongoDB instance. If you want to use a remote one. Add the MONGO_URL environmental variable before you start the Meteor app. Ex:

MONGO_URL = "mongodb://[username]:[password]@[host]:[port]/[db]"

Done =)

Reference: StackOverflow – How to connect meteor to an existing backend?