Assignment 2: Persisting data using MongoDB and Mongoose

Our application at this point has an issue one majore issue...

• Each time the server starts, we reload the data from the same JSON file.

It would be better if the data was stored elsewhere in a persistent fashion so that even if the server were to crash, our data would remain unharmed.

In this assignment, we will focus on persisting data by moving the JSON file to a dedicated database. In our case, we will be using MongoDB, which stores data as documents. These documents are very similar to JSON objects, making MongoDB a good candidate for our web application.

Mongoose

If you take a look at MongoDB's introductory documentation, you will notice there's quite a bit of code that has to be written to add, find, update, or delete data using their APIs. Mongoose simplifies the process of communicating with MongoDB and also provides tools to organize/model the data into schemas. Schemas are used to pre-define the data's attributes, and the type each attribute will have. Read this tutorial that discusses how to use Mongoose with Node.js - uses callbacks or uses promises before continuing with the assignment.

MongoDB Atlas

MongoDB Atlas is an online service, Database as a services (DBaaS) that will host your database in the cloud. While you could just run a local instance of MongoDB, registering for an account with MongoDB Atlas removes hassles surrounding installing the database on your machine. Make sure to register for an account before completing the assignment.

Assignment

To port the listing data to MongoDB, you will be doing the following:

• Defining a schema for the 'Listing' collection
• Create a script that converts the JSON entries into Mongo documents and saves the documents to your database
• Retrieve/update/delete documents through database queries.js

Instructions: 0. Make sure to register for a MongoDB Atlas account before starting the assignment.

1. Clone the repository then install Mongoose and Initiate the repository npm install -g mongoose npm init -y npm i --save mongoose
2. Define your schema in ListingSchema.js
3. Create a config.js file (based on config.example.js) and add the uri to your MongoDB Atlas database (See Step 0 above).
4. Ensure your schema passes the tests by running mocha listing.model.test.js npm install should //Should is a testing definition libary. Installation needed only the first time you run mocha mocha listing.model.test.js
5. Fill out the JSONtoMongo.js script to add the listings to your database

• Once complete run node JSONtoMongo.js to add the json file of listings to your database

5. Complete the functions in queries.js

• Once complete run node queries.js //It should print out all the listings