Looking for help with reading from MongoDB in Node.JS - mongodb

Question

I have a number of records stored in a MongoDB I'm trying to output them to the browser window by way of a Node.JS http server. I think I'm a good portion of the way along but I'm missing a few little things that are keeping it from actually working.
The code below uses node-mongo-native to connect to the database.
If there is anyone around who can help me make those last few connections with working in node I'd really appreciate it. To be fair, I'm sure this is just the start.
var sys = require("sys");
var test = require("assert");
var http = require('http');
var Db = require('../lib/mongodb').Db,
Connection = require('../lib/mongodb').Connection,
Server = require('../lib/mongodb').Server,
//BSON = require('../lib/mongodb').BSONPure;
BSON = require('../lib/mongodb').BSONNative;
var host = process.env['MONGO_NODE_DRIVER_HOST'] != null ? process.env['MONGO_NODE_DRIVER_HOST'] : 'localhost';
var port = process.env['MONGO_NODE_DRIVER_PORT'] != null ? process.env['MONGO_NODE_DRIVER_PORT'] : Connection.DEFAULT_PORT;
sys.puts("Connecting to " + host + ":" + port);
function PutItem(err, item){
var result = "";
if(item != null) {
for (key in item) {
result += key + '=' + item[key];
}
}
// sys.puts(sys.inspect(item)) // debug output
return result;
}
function ReadTest(){
var db = new Db('mydb', new Server(host, port, {}), {native_parser:true});
var result = "";
db.open(function (err, db) {
db.collection('test', function(err, collection) {
collection.find(function (err, cursor){
cursor.each( function (err, item) {
result += PutItem(err, item);
});
});
});
});
return result;
}
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end("foo"+ReadTest());
}).listen(8124);
console.log('Server running on 8124');
Sources:
- mongo connectivity code:
https://github.com/christkv/node-mongodb-native/blob/master/examples/simple.js
- node. http code: nodejs.org
EDIT CORRECTED CODE
Thanks to Mic below who got me rolling in the right direction. For anyone interested, the corrected solution is here:
function ReadTest(res){
var db = new Db('mydb', new Server(host, port, {}), {native_parser:true});
var result = "";
res.write("in readtest\n");
db.open(function (err, db) {
res.write("now open\n");
db.collection('test', function(err, collection) {
res.write("in collection\n");
collection.find(function (err, cursor){
res.write("found\n");
cursor.each( function (err, item) {
res.write("now open\n");
var x = PutItem(err, item);
sys.puts(x);
res.write(x);
if (item == null) {
res.end('foo');
}
});
});
});
});
}
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.write("start\n");
ReadTest(res);
}).listen(8124);
console.log('Server running on 8124');

Answer 1

My guess is that you are returning result, writing the response, and closing the connection before anything is fetched from the db.
One solution would be to pass the response object to where you actually need it, something like:
function readTest(res) {
db.open(function (err, db) {
db.collection('test', function(err, collection) {
collection.find(function (err, cursor) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-type' : 'text/plain'});
cursor.each( function (err, item) { res.write(item); });
res.end();
...
Of course, you should also handle errors and try to avoid nesting too many levels, but that's a different discussion.

Answer 2

Instead of writing all the low-level Mongodb access code, you might want to try a simple library like mongous so that you can focus on your data, not on MongoDB quirks.

Answer 3

You might want to try mongoskin too.

Answer 4

Reading documents
To apply specific value filters, we can pass specific values to the find() command. Here is a SQL query:
SELECT * FROM Table1 WHERE name = 'ABC'
which is equivalent to the following in MongoDB (notice Collection1 for Table1):
db.Collection1.find({name: 'ABC'})
We can chain count() to get the number of results, pretty() to get a readable result. The results can be further narrowed by adding additional parameters:
db.Collection1.find({name: 'ABC', rollNo: 5})
It's important to notice that these filters are ANDed together, by default. To apply an OR filter, we need to use $or. These filters will be specified depending upon the structure of the document. Ex: for object attribute name for an object school, we need to specify filter like "school.name" = 'AUHS'
We're using here the DOT notation, by trying to access a nested field name of a field school. Also notice that the filters are quoted, without which we'll get syntax errors.
Equality matches on arrays can be performed:
on the entire arrays
based on any element
based on a specific element
more complex matches using operators
In the below query:
db.Collection1.find({name: ['ABC','XYZ']})
MongoDB is going to identify documents by an exact match to an array of one or more values. Now for these types of queries, the order of elements matters, meaning that we will only match documents that have ABC followed by XYZ and those are the only 2 elements of the array name
{name:["ABC","GHI","XYZ"]},
{name:["DEF","ABC","XYZ"]}
In the above document, let's say that we need to get all the documnts where ABC is the first element. So, we'll use the below filter:
db.Schools.find({'name.0': 'ABC' })