See MeteorHacks article on Complete NPM integration for Meteor

mrt add npm

{
  "redis": "0.8.2",
  "github": "0.1.8"
}

if (Meteor.isClient) {
  getGists = function getGists(user, callback) {
    Meteor.call('getGists', user, callback);
  }
}

if (Meteor.isServer) {
  Meteor.methods({
    'getGists': function getGists(user) {
      var GithubApi = Meteor.require('github');
      var github = new GithubApi({
          version: "3.0.0"
      });

      var gists = Meteor.sync(function(done) {
        github.gists.getFromUser({user: 'arunoda'}, function(err, data) {
          done(null, data);
        });
      });

      return gists.result;
    }
  });
}

Available in the Server Side only

This method loads NPM modules you've specified in the packages.json file.

var Github = Meteor.require('github');

Available in the Server Side only

Meteor APIs are executed synchronously. Most of the NodeJS modules works asynchronously. So we need a way to bride the gap. Meteor.sync() does that.

Meteor.sync() pause the execution until you invoke done() callback as shown below.

var response = Meteor.sync(function(done) {
  setTimeout(function() { 
    done(null, 1001);
  }, 100);
});

console.log(response.result); // 1001

done() callback takes 2 arguments. error and the result object. You can get them as the return value of the Meteor.sync() as shown as response in the above example.

return value is an object and it has 2 fields. error and response.