Working with the examples for Node.js driver

The node.js driver is a package for interacting with MongoDB.

Importing a JSON

The command mongoimport allows us to import human readable JSON in a specific database & a collection. To import a JSON data in a specific database & a collection, type mongoimport -d databaseName -c collectionName jsonFileName.json

find() and Cursors in the Node.js Driver

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

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

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

var query = {"category_code": "biotech"};

db.collection('companies').find(query).toArray(function(err, docs) {

assert.equal(err, null);assert.notEqual(docs.length, 0);

docs.forEach(function(doc) {console.log(doc.name + " is a " + doc.category_code + " company.");});

db.close();

});

});

Notice that the call .toArray is making the application to fetch the entire dataset.

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

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

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

var query = {"category_code": "biotech"};

var cursor = db.collection('companies').find(query);

function(doc) {cursor.forEach(console.log( doc.name + " is a " + doc.category_code + " company." );},function(err) {assert.equal(err, null);return db.close();});});

Notice that the cursor returned by the find() is assigned to var cursor. With this approach, instead of fetching all data in memort and consuming data at once, we’re streaming the data to our application. find() can create a cursor immediately because it doesn’t actually make a request to the database until we try to use some of the documents it will provide. The point of cursor is to describe our query. The 2nd parameter to cursor.forEach shows what to do when the driver gets exhausted or an error occurs.

In the initial version of the above code, it was toArray() which forced the database call. It meant we needed ALL the documents and wanted them to be in an array.

Also, MongoDB returns data in batch format. The image below shows, requests from cursors (from application) to MongoDB

forEach is better than toArray because we can process documents as they come in until we reach the end. Contrast it with toArray - where we wait for ALL the documents to be retrieved and the entire array is built. This means we’re not getting any advantage from the fact that the driver and the database system are working together to batch results to your application. Batching is meant to provide efficiency in terms of memory overhead and the execution time. Take advantage of it, if you can in your application.

Projection in the Node.js Driver

Remember that projections allows us to explicitly include or exclude fields in a MongoDB query. We use 1 to indicate that we want to include a field and 0 to indicate that we wish to exclude the field. Remember that _id field is special -

• _id field gets included by default, unless we explicitly exclude it
• All other fields are excluded, until we explicitly include them

Also, since we’re working in javascript, we can construct our project documents and documents to be inserted into our collections in a way that is very similar to the way we do this in the mongo shell. What’s different is the driver provides one set of classes and methods we use to interact with MongoDB and the mongo shell provides it’s own API.

W. r. t. CRUD as of MongoDB 3.2 the driver and the mongo shell adhere to the same spec. How you access these methods and how they’re implemented varies of course, from the mongo shell.

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

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

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

var query = {"category_code": "biotech"};    var projection = {"name": 1, "category_code": 1, "_id": 0};

var cursor = db.collection('companies').find(query);    cursor.project(projection);

cursor.forEach(        function(doc) {            console.log(doc.name + " is a " + doc.category_code + " company.");            console.log(doc);        },        function(err) {            assert.equal(err, null);            return db.close();        }    );

});

The current best practice in the node.js driver, is to chain a call to project onto our cursor i.e. cursor.project. This call to project sets a field projection for the query. This call does not force a request to retrieve documents from the database, as does the foreach method. Rather it adds some additional details to the query representation maintained by our cursor. There’re a number of cursor methods, we can chain together to fully express the operation we wish to execute against our MongoDB database. The call to db.collection is synchronous. We’re going to modify that cursor with a field projection here using the project method on the cursor.

Query Operators in the Node.js Driver

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient,    commandLineArgs = require('command-line-args'),    assert = require('assert');

var options = commandLineOptions();

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

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

var query = queryDocument(options);    var projection = {"_id": 1, "name": 1, "founded_year": 1,                      "number_of_employees": 1, "crunchbase_url": 1};

var cursor = db.collection('companies').find(query, projection);    var numMatches = 0;

cursor.forEach(        function(doc) {            numMatches = numMatches + 1;            console.log( doc );        },        function(err) {            assert.equal(err, null);            console.log("Our query was:" + JSON.stringify(query));            console.log("Matching documents: " + numMatches);            return db.close();        }    );

});

function queryDocument(options) {

console.log(options);

var query = {        "founded_year": {            "$gte": options.firstYear,            "$lte": options.lastYear        }    };

if ("employees" in options) {        query.number_of_employees = { "$gte": options.employees };    }

return query;

}

function commandLineOptions() {

var cli = commandLineArgs([        { name: "firstYear", alias: "f", type: Number },        { name: "lastYear", alias: "l", type: Number },        { name: "employees", alias: "e", type: Number }    ]);

var options = cli.parse()    if ( !(("firstYear" in options) && ("lastYear" in options))) {        console.log(cli.getUsage({            title: "Usage",            description: "The first two options below are required. The rest are optional."        }));        process.exit();    }

return options;

}

To call it use node app.js -f 2004 -l 2008 -e 100. Notice that commandLineArgs is getting parsed. Also, you might see the difference between the _id field representation by mongo shell and node.js driver:

• _id : ObjectId("507f1f77bcf86cd799439011") on mongo shell
• _id : 507f1f77bcf86cd799439011 on node.js driver

This happens because of the difference in the way node.js driver and the mongo shell chooses to stringify the _id field.

$regex in the Node.js Driver

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient,    commandLineArgs = require('command-line-args'),    assert = require('assert');

var options = commandLineOptions();

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

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

var query = queryDocument(options);    var projection = projectionDocument(options);

var cursor = db.collection('companies').find(query);    cursor.project(projection);

var numMatches = 0;

cursor.forEach(        function(doc) {            numMatches = numMatches + 1;            console.log( doc );        },        function(err) {            assert.equal(err, null);            console.log("Our query was:" + JSON.stringify(query));            console.log("Matching documents: " + numMatches);            return db.close();        }    );

});

function queryDocument(options) {

console.log(options);

var query = {};

if ("overview" in options) {        query.overview = {"$regex": options.overview, "$options": "i"};    }

if ("milestones" in options) {        query["milestones.source_description"] =            {"$regex": options.milestones, "$options": "i"};    }

return query;}

function projectionDocument(options) {

var projection = {        "_id": 0,        "name": 1,        "founded_year": 1    };

if ("overview" in options) {        projection.overview = 1;    }

if ("milestones" in options) {        projection["milestones.source_description"] = 1;    }

return projection;}

function commandLineOptions() {

var cli = commandLineArgs([        { name: "overview", alias: "o", type: String },        { name: "milestones", alias: "m", type: String }    ]);

var options = cli.parse()    if (Object.keys(options).length < 1) {        console.log(cli.getUsage({            title: "Usage",            description: "You must supply at least one option. See below."        }));        process.exit();    }

return options;}

The $options set to i indicates that the regex search needs to be case-insensitive. MongoDB supports perl like regular expressions. There’re a couple of ways in which we can set the values for the query documents:

• Using curly braces { "_id": 0, "name": 1, "founded_year": 1 }
• Using dots projection.overview = 1;
• Using array indexing projection["milestones.source_description"] = 1;

Sort, Skip, and Limit in the Node.js Driver

To sort documents, we can apply sort on a cursor object. To enforce order of sort, instead of passing an object, we need to pass an array to the sort method.

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient,  commandLineArgs = require('command-line-args'),  assert = require('assert');

var options = commandLineOptions();

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

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

var query = queryDocument(options);  var projection = {    "_id": 0,    "name": 1,    "founded_year": 1,    "number_of_employees": 1  };

var cursor = db.collection('companies').find(query);  cursor.project(projection);  cursor.limit(options.limit);  cursor.skip(options.skip);  cursor.sort([    ["founded_year", 1],    ["number_of_employees", -1]  ]);

var numMatches = 0;

cursor.forEach(    function(doc) {      numMatches = numMatches + 1;      console.log(doc.name + "\n\tfounded " + doc.founded_year +        "\n\t" + doc.number_of_employees + " employees");    },    function(err) {      assert.equal(err, null);      console.log("Our query was:" + JSON.stringify(query));      console.log("Documents displayed: " + numMatches);      return db.close();    }  );

});

function queryDocument(options) {

console.log(options);

var query = {    "founded_year": {      "$gte": options.firstYear,      "$lte": options.lastYear    }  };

if ("employees" in options) {    query.number_of_employees = {      "$gte": options.employees    };  }

return query;

}

function commandLineOptions() {

var cli = commandLineArgs([{    name: "firstYear",    alias: "f",    type: Number  }, {    name: "lastYear",    alias: "l",    type: Number  }, {    name: "employees",    alias: "e",    type: Number  }, {    name: "skip",    type: Number,    defaultValue: 0  }, {    name: "limit",    type: Number,    defaultValue: 20000  }]);

var options = cli.parse()  if (!(("firstYear" in options) && ("lastYear" in options))) {    console.log(cli.getUsage({      title: "Usage",      description: "The first two options below are required. The rest are optional."    }));    process.exit();  }

return options;

}

One thing to notice is the order in which MongoDB applies skip, limit and sort

There’s also a possibility that we can sort data on the MongoDB side as well, provided that we’ve setup the indexing.

Notice that MongoDB driver will send a query when we call a cursor method passing a callback function to process query results.

Photos

Originally published at xameeramir.github.io.

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