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MongoDB Setup

Published on December 23, 2020

This document was migrated from DigiDocs

The purpose of this guide is to quickly set up a local copy of MongoDB on Windows for local development purposes. Authentication will not be enabled or covered in this tutorial.

Installation and config

  1. Install MongoDB Community Edition, the standard configuration is fine.
  2. Take note of where your installation's bin folder is at, it should be at C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\4.2\bin by default.
  3. Add it to your environment variables. See guide here.
  4. Open your terminal - if you already have it opened, exit and re-open it to reload the enviroment variables.
  5. Enter mongo to access MongoDB.

Create a new collection

  1. Next, create a new collection, use the use command:
# To display the database you are using
db

# To switch databases use `use <database>`
# To create a new database, switch to a non-existing database
use dev

# Template
use <database>
tip

Read https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/mongo/ for more information.

Create a new user

  1. Next, create a user with readWrite and dbAdmin roles, using the db.createUser() command:
# Switch to the database you want to add the user to
use dev

# Create the user with `readWrite` and `dbAdmin` rights
db.createUser(
  {
    user: "devadmin",
    pwd: passwordPrompt(),
    roles: [ "readWrite", "dbAdmin" ]
  }
)

# Template
db.createUser(
  {
    user: <username>,
    pwd: <password>,
    roles: [ "readWrite", "dbAdmin" ]
  }
)
tip

Read https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/method/db.createUser/ for more information.

connection-string format

The connection-string is used to access the MongoDB instance from your applications (i.e. MongooseJS). The format of your connection-string is as follows:

mongodb://[username:password@]host1[:port1][,...hostN[:portN]][/[database][?options]]
# Parts in [ and ] are optional

# Example, without authentication
mongodb://localhost:27017/dev

# Example, with authentication
mongodb://devadmin:<password>@localhost:27017/dev
# Replace the <password> with your actual password
caution

If the username or password includes the at sign @, colon :, slash /, or the percent sign % character, use percent encoding. See https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/connection-string/#examples for more information.

Authentication

Given that we are not enabling authentication, you can use either of the above connection-string URI formats.

tip

Read https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/enable-authentication/ for more information.

Verify connection-string

To verify your connection-string, simply use mongo <mongoURI>:

# Example, without authentication
mongo mongodb://localhost:27017/dev

# Example, with authentication
mongo mongodb://devadmin:<password>@localhost:27017/dev

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