For this chapter, you will require MongoDB version 7.0.7 and Windows 11 (and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS).

MongoDB version 7.0 is compatible with the following:

• Windows 11, Windows Server 2019, or Windows Server 2022 (64-bit versions)
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal) and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy) for Linux (64-bit releases)

The following are recommended system configurations:

• A desktop or laptop with at least 8 GB of RAM.
• There are no CPU requirements specified as such but make sure it’s modern (a multi-core processor) to ensure efficient performance.

MongoDB is widely regarded as the leading NoSQL database in terms of popularity and usage—its power, ease of use, and versatility make it an excellent choice for large- and small-scale projects. Its scalability and performance enable the data layer of your app to have a very solid foundation.

In the following sections, you will take a deeper look into the basic concepts and building blocks of MongoDB: the document, the collection, and the database. Since this book takes a bottom-up approach, you will start from the very bottom and see an overview of the simplest data structures available in MongoDB and then take it up from there into documents, collections, and so on.

Documents

MongoDB is a document-oriented database. But what does that actually mean?

In MongoDB, documents serve a similar purpose to rows in a traditional relational database. Each document in MongoDB is a data structure that consists of key-value pairs, representing...

MongoDB is not just a database service provider, but a full-fledged developer data platform that has a set of technologies built around the core database to meet all your data needs and improve your productivity as a developer. Let’s examine the following components that you will be installing or using in the following sections:

• MongoDB Community Edition: A free version of MongoDB that runs on all major operating systems. It is what you are going to use to play around with data locally.
• MongoDB Compass: A graphical user interface (GUI) for managing, querying, aggregating, and analyzing MongoDB data in a visual environment. Compass is a mature and useful tool that you’ll be using throughout your initial querying and aggregation explorations.
• MongoDB Atlas: The database-as-a-service solution from MongoDB. This offering is one of the main reasons MongoDB is a central part of the FARM stack. It is relatively easy to set...

In this section, you will learn how to install the latest version of MongoDB Community Edition, which at the time of writing is 7.0. MongoDB Community is only supported on 64-bit versions of Windows on x86_64 architecture. Windows versions supported are Windows 11, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022. To install MongoDB and Compass, you can refer to the following steps.

Note

We strongly advise you to check the instructions on the MongoDB website (https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-windows/) to ensure you have access to the latest information, as they might slightly change.

1. To download the installer, head over to the MongoDB Download Center at https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/community, select the Windows version, and click on Download as follows:

Figure 2.1: MongoDB download page

2. Next, execute it. If a security prompt displays Open Executable File...

After installing MongoDB Community Server and Compass on your computer, you will next install mongosh, the MongoDB Shell.

Note

For instructions on other operating systems, please visit the MongoDB documentation: https://www.mongodb.com/docs/mongodb-shell/install/.

Here’s how you can do it for Windows:

1. Navigate to the MongoDB Download Center (https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/shell) and, in the Tools section, select MongoDB Shell.
2. From the dropdowns, select the Windows version and the msi package and click on Download.

Figure 2.4: Download the MongoDB Shell

3. Next, locate the msi package on your computer and execute it. If a security prompt asks Open Executable File, select Yes and proceed to the MongoDB setup wizard. The wizard will open the following page. Click on Next:

Figure 2.5: The MongoDB Shell Setup Wizard

4. In the prompt, select the...

The MongoDB Database Tools are a collection of command-line utilities for working with a MongoDB deployment. Some of the common database tools are as follows:

• mongoimport: Imports content from an extended JSON, CSV, or TSV export file
• mongoexport: Produces a JSON or CSV export of data stored in a mongod instance
• mongodump: Creates a binary export of the contents of a mongod database

There are some other tools, such as mongorestore, bsondump, mongostat, mongotop, and mongofiles. The MongoDB Database Tools can be installed with an MSI installer (or downloaded as a ZIP archive).

Note

The msi package can be downloaded from the MongoDB Download Center (https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/database-tools).

After downloading, you can follow the installation instructions provided in the MongoDB documentation (https://www.mongodb.com/docs/database-tools/installation/installation-windows/).

The next section provides a walk-through of...

Linux offers numerous benefits for the development and management of local servers, but most importantly, should you decide that the database-as-a-service of MongoDB isn’t what you want to use anymore, you will probably want to work on a Linux-based server.

In this book, we will go over the installation process on Ubuntu version 22.04 LTS (Jammy), while the MongoDB version also supports Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal) on x86_64 architecture. The necessary steps to install MongoDB Ubuntu will be listed here, but you should always check the MongoDB Ubuntu installation page (https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/) for recent changes. The process, however, shouldn’t change.

The following actions are to be performed in a Bash shell. Download the public key that will allow you to install MongoDB, then you will create a list file and reload the package manager. Similar steps are required for other...

MongoDB Atlas—a cloud database service provided by MongoDB—is one of the strongest selling points of MongoDB.

MongoDB Atlas is a fully managed database service, which means that MongoDB handles the infrastructure management, database setup, configuration, and maintenance tasks for you. This allows you to focus on developing your applications instead of managing the underlying infrastructure.

Note

The processes of signing up and setting up a MongoDB Atlas instance are well documented at https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/getting-started/.

There are two ways in which you can set up your Atlas account:

• Atlas UI (website)
• Atlas CLI (command line)

The Atlas CLI provides a dedicated CLI for MongoDB Atlas, allowing you to manage your Atlas database deployments and Atlas Search directly from your terminal. In this book, you will see how to do it from the UI.

Head over to https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/register to create...

Let’s see MongoDB in action and experience firsthand the power of the most popular NoSQL database. This section will show you the most essential MongoDB commands, through simple examples. These methods will enable you, as a developer, to take control of your data, create new documents, query documents by using different criteria and conditions, perform simple and more complex aggregations, and output data in various forms.

Although you will be talking to MongoDB through the Python drivers (Motor and PyMongo), it is helpful to learn how to write queries directly at first. You’ll begin by querying the sample_mflix.movies dataset that was imported into your cluster at the time of cluster creation, then you’ll go through the process of creating new data—inserting, updating, and so on.

Let’s first define the two options for executing MongoDB commands, as follows:

• Compass GUI
• MongoDB Shell (mongosh...

This section will show the use of the sample_mflix.movies collection as an example for demonstration. Working with real data with some expected query results helps reinforce the acquired notions and makes understanding the underlying processes easier and more thorough.

The most frequent MongoDB query language commands—and the ones that this chapter will be covering—are as follows:

• find(): Finds and selects documents matching simple or complex criteria
• insertOne(): Inserts a new document into the collection
• insertMany(): Inserts an array of documents into the collection
• updateOne() and updateMany(): Update one or more documents according to some criteria
• deleteOne() and deleteMany(): Delete one or more documents from the collection

There are 21,349 documents in the sample_mflix.movies collection. To query for all the documents, type the following command in the MongoDB Shell:

db.movies.find()

The preceding command...

This chapter detailed the basic building blocks that define MongoDB and its structure. You have seen how to set up a database in the cloud using MongoDB Atlas and explored the basics of creating, updating, and deleting documents. Further, this chapter detailed the aggregation pipeline framework—a strong analytic tool.

The next chapter will show how to create APIs with FastAPI—an exciting and new Python framework. We will provide a minimal yet complete guide of the main concepts and features, which should hopefully convince you that building APIs can be fast, efficient, and fun.