MongoDB Drivers For Different Languages

MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is widely used for storing and managing both complex and larger data. For good integration between applications and the MongoDB database, it provides drivers that allow the developer to interact with the database using the programming language of their choice. In this article, we will see different drivers of MongoDB which are popularly used.

Programming Languages supported by MongoDB are C, C++, C#, Go, Java, Kotlin, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and Swift. We will understand each one of them more easily along with their code implementation

What are MongoDB drivers?

These are software modules or libraries that help in the interaction between applications and the MongoDB database. These drivers act as a bridge between the applications and the database. With the help of these drivers, developers can easily perform CRUD operations by writing code in any language that is supported by MongoDB drivers.

MongoDB drivers are easy to use and consistent across several languages. You can use MongoDB drivers to create, read, update, and delete documents, as well as to create indexes, run aggregation pipelines, and execute the database commands. MongoDB drivers also handle the communication with the MongoDB server like establishing connections, sending requests, and receiving responses.

To use MongoDB drivers, firstly you need to install them in your application environment and import them in your code. You also need to specify the connection string for your Mongodb deployment, which can be either a self-hosted cloud-based cluster or a cloud-based service like Mongodb Atlas. Then, you can use the driver methods to interact with your MongoDB database and collections in it.

1. MongoDB Drivers for Node.js

NodeJS renders the javascript code out of the browser, which enables developers to build applications for desktop and servers. Node.js is built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and use an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. Using NodeJs with Mongodb can be a good choice for developers due to its JSON like syntax. You can add the driver to your application to work with MongoDB in JavaScript.

Key Features

• Asynchronus Operations: It utilised NodeJS’s asynchronus nature for efficient I/O operations.

• BSON Support: BSON (Binary JSON) is the binary-encoded format and it is used to serialize documents for storage and data sharing.

Code Example

Javascript

// Import the MongoClient class from the 'mongodb' package
const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');

// MongoDB connection URI. Replace '<username>' and '<password>' with actual credentials.
const uri = 'mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@cluster0.mongodb.net/test';

// Create a new instance of MongoClient with the connection URI and options
const client = new MongoClient(uri, { useNewUrlParser: true });

// Define an asynchronous function named 'run'
async function run() {
  try {
    // Connect to the MongoDB server using the MongoClient instance
    await client.connect();

    // If the connection is successful, log a message indicating the successful connection
    console.log('Connected to the database');
  } finally {
    // Whether the connection succeeds or fails, close the MongoClient connection
    await client.close();
  }
}

// Call the 'run' function and handle any errors using the 'catch' method
run().catch(console.error);

If database is successfully connected then the output will be shown as:

Connected to the database.

2. MongoDB Drivers for Python

Python is the most popular language for the data-intensive tasks and data science. It is because there are many libraries which prove to be helpful in these tasks. Whether you are building web applications, analysing data, Mongodb is great fit for the python developers. This is because Python stores data in dictionary format, which is somewhat similar to the JSON like format in which MongoDB stores and manages the data. Python has capability of parsing the JSON data using built in methods in a single step.

Key features

• Pymongo Library: The official MongoDB driver for the python is known as Pymongo.

• Dictionary like Syntax: The driver supports a syntax that resembles Python dictionaries which makes it intuitive for the python developers.

Code Example

Python

# Import the MongoClient class from the 'pymongo' package
from pymongo import MongoClient

# MongoDB connection string. Replace "<connection_string>" with your actual connection string.
client = MongoClient("<connection_string>")

# Access the 'test_database' database from the MongoDB server
db = client.test_database

# Access the 'test_collection' collection within the 'test_database' database
collection = db.test_collection

# Find one document in the collection where the "key" field has the value "value"
result = collection.find_one({"key": "value"})

# Print the result to the console
print(result)

Output if matching data is found:

{'_id': ObjectId('5f8a74b7c35e43ca756466f4'), 'key': 'value', 'other_field': 'some_value'}

Else output is:

NULL

3. MongoDB Drivers for Java

Java supports multiple platform. This allows use of MongoDB with java a natural fit. Java’s object can be mapped directly to MongoDB documents when using the native driver.

Key features

• Java Driver API: The MongoDB Java driver include a API for interacting with MongoDB database.

• Support for java streams: The driver supports the java stream which makes efficient processing of large datasets.

Code Example

Java

// Import necessary MongoDB Java driver classes
import com.mongodb.client.MongoClients;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoClient;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoDatabase;

// Define a class named MongoDBExample
public class MongoDBExample {
    // The main method, where the program execution starts
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Use try-with-resources to automatically close the MongoClient
        try (MongoClient mongoClient = MongoClients.create("<connection_string>")) {
            // Connect to the "testDatabase" database
            MongoDatabase database = mongoClient.getDatabase("testDatabase");

            // Print a message indicating a successful connection to the database
            System.out.println("Connected to the database");
        }
    }
}

If database is successfully connected then the output will be shown as:

 Connected to the database.

4. MongoDB Drivers for Ruby

Ruby became very popular after release of rails framework. This language is known for its simple syntax. It provides direct interfaces to MongoDB. It also provides an efficient way to map Ruby objects to MongoDB entities.

Key features

• Ruby Driver: The mongodb ruby driver provides a native Ruby implementation.

• ActiveRecord integration: It seamlessly integrates with Ruby on Rails’ ActiveRecord.

Example Code

Ruby

# Import the 'mongo' gem
require 'mongo'

# Create a new MongoDB client instance with the specified connection string
client = Mongo::Client.new('<connection_string>')

# Access the default database for the MongoDB connection
database = client.database

# Access the 'test_collection' collection within the default database
collection = database[:test_collection]

# Find the first document in the collection where the "key" field has the value "value"
result = collection.find('key' => 'value').first

# Print the result to the console
puts result

Output:

If matching document is found:

{"_id"=>BSON::ObjectId('5f8a74b7c35e43ca756466f4'), "key"=>"value", "other_field"=>"some_value"}

if not found:

NIL

5. MongoDB Drivers for Go

Go offers high performance and tremendous memory management features. Because of its efficient concurrency handling , Go is used in large large projects for the cloud such as kubernetes.

Key features

• Official driver: go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/mongo package.

• Connection handling: The driver manages connections to the MongoDB server which includes connection pool and automatic reconnection.

Example code

Go

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "time"

    "go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/mongo"
    "go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/mongo/options"
)

func main() {
    // Set up MongoDB connection options
    clientOptions := options.Client().ApplyURI("mongodb://localhost:27017")

    // Connect to MongoDB
    client, err := mongo.Connect(context.TODO(), clientOptions)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal("Error connecting to MongoDB:", err)
    }

    // Defer closing the connection until the main function completes
    defer func() {
        // Disconnect from MongoDB when done
        if err := client.Disconnect(context.TODO()); err != nil {
            log.Fatal("Error disconnecting from MongoDB:", err)
        }
    }()

    // Print a message indicating a successful connection to MongoDB
    fmt.Println("Connected to MongoDB!")
}

Output:

Connected to MongoDB

6. Mongodb driver for Rust

Rust is a low-level programming language with high performance. Rust is quite often used with MongoDB to write game engines and embedded applications. It also provides high level API to support common MongoDB operations.

Key features

1. It uses the bson crate for BSON support.

2. The driver support both Synchronous and Asynchronous operations.

Code example

Rust

use mongodb::{Client, options::ClientOptions};

// Define a Person struct to represent the document structure
#[derive(Debug)]
struct Person {
    name: String,
    age: i32,
    city: String,
    email: String,
}

// The main asynchronous function
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // Set up MongoDB connection options
    let client_options = ClientOptions::parse("mongodb://localhost:27017").await?;

    // Connect to MongoDB using the configured options
    let client = Client::with_options(client_options)?;

    // Access the "testdb" database and "people" collection
    let db = client.database("testdb");
    let collection = db.collection::<Person>("people");

    // Create a Person instance to insert into the collection
    let person = Person {
        name: "James".to_string(),
        age: 28,
        city: "New York".to_string(),
        email: "James@example.com".to_string(),
    };

    // Insert the Person document into the collection
    collection.insert_one(person.clone(), None).await?;

    // Print a message indicating that the document was inserted
    println!("Inserted document: {:?}", person);

    // Query the database to find the inserted document
    let filter = mongodb::bson::doc! { "name": "James" };
    if let Some(result) = collection.find_one(filter, None).await? {
        // Print the found document
        println!("Found document: {:?}", result);
    } else {
        // Print a message if the document is not found
        println!("Document not found");
    }

    // Return a Result indicating successful execution
    Ok(())
}

Output:

Inserted document: Person { name: "James", age: 28, city: "New York", email: "James@example.com" }
Found document: Person { name: "James", age: 28, city: "New York", email: "James@example.com" }

Conclusion

There are various types of drivers for different languages. In this article, we mentioned drivers for the widely used languages. MongoDB’s support for several programming language makes it easy for developers to integrate their applications seamlessly with the mongodb database. Also, there are multiple language specific features given by MongoDB drivers. This article outlined the important key features of the mongodb drivers for the widely used known languages.