How do I manage MongoDB connections in a Node.js web application?

Solution 1:

The primary committer to node-mongodb-native says:

You open do MongoClient.connect once when your app boots up and reuse the db object. It's not a singleton connection pool each .connect creates a new connection pool.

So, to answer your question directly, reuse the db object that results from MongoClient.connect(). This gives you pooling, and will provide a noticeable speed increase as compared with opening/closing connections on each db action.

Solution 2:

Open a new connection when the Node.js application starts, and reuse the existing db connection object:

/server.js

import express from 'express';
import Promise from 'bluebird';
import logger from 'winston';
import { MongoClient } from 'mongodb';
import config from './config';
import usersRestApi from './api/users';

const app = express();

app.use('/api/users', usersRestApi);

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello World');
});

// Create a MongoDB connection pool and start the application
// after the database connection is ready
MongoClient.connect(config.database.url, { promiseLibrary: Promise }, (err, db) => {
  if (err) {
    logger.warn(`Failed to connect to the database. ${err.stack}`);
  }
  app.locals.db = db;
  app.listen(config.port, () => {
    logger.info(`Node.js app is listening at http://localhost:${config.port}`);
  });
});

/api/users.js

import { Router } from 'express';
import { ObjectID } from 'mongodb';

const router = new Router();

router.get('/:id', async (req, res, next) => {
  try {
    const db = req.app.locals.db;
    const id = new ObjectID(req.params.id);
    const user = await db.collection('user').findOne({ _id: id }, {
      email: 1,
      firstName: 1,
      lastName: 1
    });

    if (user) {
      user.id = req.params.id;
      res.send(user);
    } else {
      res.sendStatus(404);
    }
  } catch (err) {
    next(err);
  }
});

export default router;

Source: How to Open Database Connections in a Node.js/Express App

Solution 3:

Here is some code that will manage your MongoDB connections.

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;
var url = require("../config.json")["MongoDBURL"]

var option = {
  db:{
    numberOfRetries : 5
  },
  server: {
    auto_reconnect: true,
    poolSize : 40,
    socketOptions: {
        connectTimeoutMS: 500
    }
  },
  replSet: {},
  mongos: {}
};

function MongoPool(){}

var p_db;

function initPool(cb){
  MongoClient.connect(url, option, function(err, db) {
    if (err) throw err;

    p_db = db;
    if(cb && typeof(cb) == 'function')
        cb(p_db);
  });
  return MongoPool;
}

MongoPool.initPool = initPool;

function getInstance(cb){
  if(!p_db){
    initPool(cb)
  }
  else{
    if(cb && typeof(cb) == 'function')
      cb(p_db);
  }
}
MongoPool.getInstance = getInstance;

module.exports = MongoPool;

When you start the server, call initPool

require("mongo-pool").initPool();

Then in any other module you can do the following:

var MongoPool = require("mongo-pool");
MongoPool.getInstance(function (db){
    // Query your MongoDB database.
});

This is based on MongoDB documentation. Take a look at it.