How do I access Meteor's MongoDB from another client, while Meteor is running?
Question:
I would like to access Meteor’s MongoDB from a Python client, while Meteor is running.
I can’t start a mongod because Meteor’s database is locked.
How do I access the database from another client?
Answers:
Use the Meteor deployment instructions
The command will look like this:
PORT=3000 MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/myapp node bundle/main.js
Meteor starts the mongod for you on port 3002 when you run the meteor command, and stores the mongo data file in .meteor/local/db
Output from ps aux | grep 'mongod' shows the mongod command that meteor uses:
/usr/local/meteor/mongodb/bin/mongod --bind_ip 127.0.0.1 --smallfiles --port 3002 --dbpath /path/to/your/project/.meteor/local/db
So just connect your mongo client accordingly. In python:
>>> import pymongo
>>> con = pymongo.Connection(host='127.0.0.1', port=3002)
>>> con.database_names()
[u'meteor', u'local']
UPDATE: unfortunately making changes directly in mongo in this way won’t reflect live in the app, but the changes will be reflected on a full page (re)load.
The meteor command provides a clean way. To get the URL for the running mongod:
meteor mongo -U
which you can parse from python.
And here a shell script to get Mongo URI and Mongo Database:
#!/bin/bash -eux
read -s -p "Enter Password: " password
cmd=$(meteor mongo --url myapp.meteor.com << ENDPASS
$password
ENDPASS)
mongo_uri=$(echo $cmd | cut -f2 -d" ")
mongo_db=$(echo $mongo_uri | cut -d/ -f 4)
#my_client_command_with MONGODB_URI=$mongo_uri MONGO_DB=$mongo_db
““
In regards to a 10 second delay on updates: Tail the MongoDB oplog! There’s more information on how to do it here:
http://meteorhacks.com/lets-scale-meteor.html
Make sure you install smart collections and use those (instantiate your collections using Meteor.SmartCollection instead of Meteor.Collection) and you will find the updates are essentially immediate.
You can also find it from within server side code using:
process.env.MONGO_URL
Even if you don’t set this environment variable when running, it gets set to the default. This seems to be how it is found internally (packages/mongo/remote_collection_driver.js)
The one is given by meteor mongo -U seems to reconstruct the default domain/ip and db-name, but use the port stored in the file.
You can put this anywhere in the server folder, and read it from the command line.
console.log('db url: ' + process.env.MONGO_URL);
I set up a webpage to display it to double check in the selenium tests that we are using the test database, and not overwriting live data.
I would like to access Meteor’s MongoDB from a Python client, while Meteor is running.
I can’t start a mongod because Meteor’s database is locked.
How do I access the database from another client?
Use the Meteor deployment instructions
The command will look like this:
PORT=3000 MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/myapp node bundle/main.js
Meteor starts the mongod for you on port 3002 when you run the meteor command, and stores the mongo data file in .meteor/local/db
Output from ps aux | grep 'mongod' shows the mongod command that meteor uses:
/usr/local/meteor/mongodb/bin/mongod --bind_ip 127.0.0.1 --smallfiles --port 3002 --dbpath /path/to/your/project/.meteor/local/db
So just connect your mongo client accordingly. In python:
>>> import pymongo
>>> con = pymongo.Connection(host='127.0.0.1', port=3002)
>>> con.database_names()
[u'meteor', u'local']
UPDATE: unfortunately making changes directly in mongo in this way won’t reflect live in the app, but the changes will be reflected on a full page (re)load.
The meteor command provides a clean way. To get the URL for the running mongod:
meteor mongo -U
which you can parse from python.
And here a shell script to get Mongo URI and Mongo Database:
#!/bin/bash -eux
read -s -p "Enter Password: " password
cmd=$(meteor mongo --url myapp.meteor.com << ENDPASS
$password
ENDPASS)
mongo_uri=$(echo $cmd | cut -f2 -d" ")
mongo_db=$(echo $mongo_uri | cut -d/ -f 4)
#my_client_command_with MONGODB_URI=$mongo_uri MONGO_DB=$mongo_db
““
In regards to a 10 second delay on updates: Tail the MongoDB oplog! There’s more information on how to do it here:
http://meteorhacks.com/lets-scale-meteor.html
Make sure you install smart collections and use those (instantiate your collections using Meteor.SmartCollection instead of Meteor.Collection) and you will find the updates are essentially immediate.
You can also find it from within server side code using:
process.env.MONGO_URL
Even if you don’t set this environment variable when running, it gets set to the default. This seems to be how it is found internally (packages/mongo/remote_collection_driver.js)
The one is given by meteor mongo -U seems to reconstruct the default domain/ip and db-name, but use the port stored in the file.
You can put this anywhere in the server folder, and read it from the command line.
console.log('db url: ' + process.env.MONGO_URL);
I set up a webpage to display it to double check in the selenium tests that we are using the test database, and not overwriting live data.