MongoDB for node.js developers jumpstart

credit:https://medium.com/@joelrodrigues/how-to-access-mongodb-from-node-js-e37c587f226a

What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is a document database holding data in JSON format. Since it’s not based on joining, it’s easy to distribute data across servers by it’s sharding feature.

Developers can develop application which can be agnostic about deployments. MongoDB supports scaling out as opposed to RDBMS which supports scaling up. Mongo shell is written using C++ V8 for administering the MongoDB.

credit: http://coenraets.org/blog/2012/10/creating-a-rest-api-using-node-js-express-and-mongodb/

What is node.js

_node.js_ is basically a _C++_ program that you control using _V8 javascript_. So any applications you write using _node.js_ will be written in _javascript_ and it will control this _C++_ application (_node.js_) and you’ll be able to say something like they made request for this resource and your application actually in _javascript_ will say: okey, they made a request for this resource, I don’t have to respond to that. Now respond accordingly.

Node.js connects to MongoDB using drivers. Installing 32 bit release shall be avoided because it limits the addressable size of data using the default storage engine.

What is JSON?

To a layman, [JSON](http://json.org/) is merely a string, anyways. JSON objects are composed of key-value pairs. Keys must be strings, Keys and values must be separated by semi-colons. Fields within a JSON object are separated by commas as delimiters. JSON objects are opened and closed using curly braces:

{"string" : "sting value goes here","date" : "2015-10-27T22:35:21.908Z","number" : 123,"object" : {"key1" : "value1","key2" : "value2"},"boolean" : true,"array" : ["test",{ "key1" : "a", "key2" : "b" },[ "abc", "xyz" ]]}

The above example shows that JSON supports a number of data-types. The object field shows an example of nested values. As we can see object and array - MongoDB data models commonly make use of nesting and even what we might call deep nesting. The flexibility JSON provides makes it simple to implement different data access patterns by creating objects that contain all the data required to render a webpage full of content or say to provide another type of data view for users with very few requests.

What is BSON?

MongoDB stores data as [BSON](http://bsonspec.org/) (binary JSON). Here is the comparison:

// JSON{"hello": "world"}

// BSON"\x16\x00\x00\x00\x02hello\x00 \x06\ x00\ x00\ x00world\ x00\ x00 "

MongoDB drivers send and recieve data in BSON format and when the data is written to MongoDB, it’s stored in BSON.

On the application side, the drivers map BSON to most appropriate native data types. It’s

• lightweight
• traversable, to support a variety of operations necessary for writing, reading and indexing MongoDB documents
• efficient, meaning encoding/decoding data to/from BSON as the drivers need to do can be performed very quickly.

JSON doesn’t distinguishes between integers and floats. Doesn’t supports dates. BSON extends the JSON value types to include integers, doubles, dates and binary data to support images and a number of other types of data.

Installation for Windows

To access the mongo and mongod directly from shell, Change the path for MongoDB:

• Go to System Properties
• Go to Advanced settings
• Click Environment variables
• Go to System variables
• Go to Path (this is where Windows looks for executables)
• Add the MongoDB’s startup location (eg: C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.2\bin)

Sometimes, you might need to refresh the system to see these shortcuts working

However before using mongodb from terminal, create the C:\data\db directory for MongoDB to store data by following the below commands:

md \data\db

Notice, the \ before data\db - this makes sure that the directory is created in root directory (in this case C:\) only.

Now, if you type mongod and hit Enter, it starts running. If you read the log printed on the terminal, it says that MongoDB is listening on port=27017 and that dbpath=C:\data\db i.e. the default path - which we created lately.

Now, once mongod is running, we can start mongo which makes a connection to port 27017.

Doing some CRUD

For the sake of testing this installation, we’ll do a simple document insert using:

db.names.insert({name:'testing'}) and find (or select in relational terms) using the below command:

db.names.find()

Where {name:'testing'} is an example of document. Also, to make the result of .find() much readable, we can chain .pretty() command.

We can run MongoDB as a service as well.

In MongoDB, documents are stored in colletions which are organized into databases. To see databases present in MongoDB run show dbs

To insert a document into a collection, we first need to know how to specify that collection in the command. A collection and database that contains it form a namespace. When doing CRUD operations, we reference the global variable db. This variable holds the reference to the database we’re currently using. To switch to a database names test type MySQL like command use test.

The insert operation returns a document as well, where acknowledged set to true indicates that the record (or better say, document) was inserted successfully. All documents must have an underscore _id field. Each document in a collection must have a unique document id. At the heart of the query language for MongoDB is a query by example strategy. We can pass a blank object {}, key value pair {name: "Uber"}. The result of find() command is not a mere array of documents, it’s instead a cursor object. We can see this:

var c = db.names.find();c.hasNext() //returns true, meaning there is a document yet to be visited by this cursorc.next() //grabs that document

Building using node

To build applications using node.js, we first need to install it.

Let’s create a simple http server:

// Source: howtonode.org/hello-node

// Load the http module to create an http server.var http = require('http');

// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests.var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});response.end("Hello World\n");});

// Listen on port 8000, IP defaults to 127.0.0.1server.listen(8000);

// Put a friendly message on the terminalconsole.log("Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/");

Store the above code in a .js file, let’s say app.js

And how do we start it?

In the terminal, go to the location of the file and type node app.js. To verify, if it’s running or not, go to http://localhost:8000. Notice port 8000, which we‘ve pecified in the above code.

What is NPM

var express = require('express'), cons = require('consolidate'), mongodb = require('mongodb');

require() is how we add an external library in a node.js application. If we run this code through node terminal, we’ll get the below error:

To get this missing express thing as a node package, we can use node command line npm install express. In real projects, there will be a bunch of package dependencies. Installing them all one-by-one will be a big pain. To resolve this comes package.json file. This file contains meta data about the dependencies:

{"name": "project name goes here","version": "0.1.2","description": "npm introduction","main": "app.js","dependencies": {"consolidate": "~0.13.1","express": "~4.13.3","mongodb": "~2.1.3"},"author": "ABC","license": "MIT"}

With this file in place, simply running npm install will get all the packages for us inside project’s local node_modules directory. There’s also a way to install packages globally.

What is Node.js Driver

The driver communicates with the MongoDB server using it’s wire protocol. It handles things like opening sockets, detecting errors and managing connections to replica sets. To include the driver in an application, use code var mongodb = require('mongodb'); and install using npm install mongodb. As we can see, it’s just a node package. Try to connect to MongoDB using this package:

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient,assert = require('assert');

var url = 'mongodb://localhost:27017/startup';

MongoClient.connect(url, function(err, db) {

assert.equal(null, err);console.log("Successfully connected to server");

// Find some documents in our collectiondb.collection('startup').find({}).toArray(function(err, docs) {

// Print the documents returneddocs.forEach(function(doc) {console.log(doc.name);});

// Close the DBdb.close();});

// Declare successconsole.log("Last call");});

In order to use the MongoDB Node.js driver, it’s important to have a solid understanding of the asynchronous nature of IO in javascript, including database requests.

The _mongo_ shell is synchronous meaning that when you issue a find command, it blocks waiting for command to return before continuing. This is not the case with _Node.js_ driver. Whether you’re doing a query, as we are here in the call defined or just setting up a connection to the database. As is common in _Javascript_ applications, the _Node.js_ driver we’re going to use is designed so that it’s methods function asynchronously. What this means is that instead of waiting on a return value from any methods we call, we instead pass in a callback function.

The second parameter in the above MongoClient.connect call is a callback function. And is going to handle the result of this connection operation. Because of anysnchronous nature of node.js, the following message gets printed before any database values:

_Last call_

What is Express

Express is a node.js module that handles routing, request parameters and other details of HTTP requests.

Here is a basic example of setting up a basic Express server:

var express = require('express'),app = express();

app.get('/', function(req, res){res.send('Hello World');});

app.use(function(req, res){res.sendStatus(404);});

var server = app.listen(3000, function() {var port = server.address().port;console.log('Express server listening on port %s', port);});

Implementing HTML Templates

The following example shows how to implement a HTML template:

//file: app.jsvar express = require('express'), //set up the Express serverapp = express(), //use it to create an Express appengines = require('consolidate'); //use the wrapper library

app.engine('html', engines.nunjucks); //register nunjucks template engine

app.set('view engine', 'html'); //as being associated with the html extension, set the view engine app setting

app.set('views', __dirname + '/views'); //specify template location

app.get('/', function(req, res) {res.render('hello', { name : 'Templates' });});

app.use(function(req, res){res.sendStatus(404);});

var server = app.listen(3000, function() {var port = server.address().port;console.log('Express server listening on port %s', port);});

And the html

//file: views/hello.html

<h1>Hello, {{name}}!</h1>

In the above code, consolidate is basically a set of wrappers for a number of template engines for Express. Express requires certain libraries to have a certain interface and consolidate handles that for us. __dirname is a node.js variable which allows us to access to the directory in which the application file (in our case, app.js) resides. Since, we’ve passed name : 'Templates' - we’ll see the below output:

Here’s a more advanced version which connects to the database as well:

//file: app.js

var express = require('express'),app = express(),engines = require('consolidate'),MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient,assert = require('assert');

app.engine('html', engines.nunjucks);app.set('view engine', 'html');app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');

MongoClient.connect('mongodb://localhost:27017/startup', function(err, db) {

assert.equal(null, err);console.log("Successfully connected to MongoDB.");

app.get('/', function(req, res){

db.collection('startup').find({}).toArray(function(err, docs) {res.render('startup', { 'name': docs } );});

});

app.use(function(req, res){res.sendStatus(404);});

var server = app.listen(3000, function() {  
    var port = server.address().port;  
    console.log('Express server listening on port %s.', port);  
});

});

and the html

//file: views/startup.html <h1>Hello, {{name}}!</h1>

Handling GET requests using Express

var express = require('express'),app = express(),engines = require('consolidate');

app.engine('html', engines.nunjucks);app.set('view engine', 'html');app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');

// Handler for internal server errorsfunction errorHandler(err, req, res, next) {console.error(err.message);console.error(err.stack);res.status(500).render('error_template', { error: err });}

app.get('/:name', function(req, res, next) {var name = req.params.name;var getvar1 = req.query.getvar1;var getvar2 = req.query.getvar2;res.render('hello', { name : name, getvar1 : getvar1, getvar2 : getvar2 });});

app.use(errorHandler);

var server = app.listen(3000, function() {var port = server.address().port;console.log('Express server listening on port %s.', port);});

The hello template is:

<h1>Hello, {{name}}, here are your GET variables:</h1><ul><li>{{getvar1}}</li><li>{{getvar2}}</li></ul>

and the error template goes here:

<h1>Error: {{error}}</h1>

In the above app, we’re just registering only one route i.e. /:name. The colon says to take this part of the URL and store in a variable called name.

Will share further notes next week.

Photos

Originally published at xameeramir.github.io.