Downloading & Installing MongoDB on Windows & MAC

In the previous articles, you have learned what is MongoDB and what are advantages of MongoDB over SQL. In this article, we will learn about downloading and installing MongoDB on Windows & MAC and other operating systems. This will be a very small article since setting up MongoDB is a very simple task. Just follow the below sections.

Downloading MongoDB On Windows & MAC


MongoDB is an open source software. The very first step is to download MongoDB. Check and download the latest and stable version available. You can download the MongoDB version which your system supports, from the official MongoDB site link http://www.mongodb.org/downloads. You will be able to see the different versions available. Based on your system support, you can download respective link. Below is the snapshot of different versions available for Windows.

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac

The key point to be noted here is that MongoDB does not support Window XP. 32-bit versions of MongoDB only support databases smaller than 2GB and suitable only for testing and evaluation purposes.

Similarly, in order to download MongoDB for Linux or other systems, move to respective tabs and download MongoDB from there.

Below is the snapshot for Linux systems for your reference.

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac 1

You can select your Linux system version and download MongoDB accordingly.

Before moving forward, I hope that you have downloaded MongoDB on your system successfully. (Install mongodb community edition)

Installing MongoDB on Windows & MAC


After downloading, the next step is to install MongoDB on your machine. To install MongoDB, locate the downloaded zip file. Extract this and click on the executable file. Follow the instructions appears on the screen. These instructions will guide you to complete the installation process. Once the installation is complete, you can see a MongoDB folder generated in your C:\Program Files folder. It shows that installation is completed successfully.

Setting Up the MongoDB Environment


The next step is setting up the MongoDB environment to get started with MongoDB. You will need to add MongoDB folder path (C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.4\bin) in your system’s environment variable (PATH variable).

MongoDB also requires a data directory to store all the information. The default data directory path is C:\data\db. So, you will also need to create this folder in order to use MongoDB. You can create this folder through command prompt.

Execute the following command sequence:

C:\ md data

C:\  md data\db

If you are using MAC, execute below command sequence:

mkdir –p /data/db

Now, you have created the required folder and set up MongoDB.

Let’s go ahead and start MongoDB Server and MongoDB Shell (Shell is a full-featured Javascript Interpreter) to play around.

Follow below steps:

  1. Go to MongoDB folder –> Bin –> Double Click on mongod (to run mongodb)

 Alternatively, If you want to start MongoDB using command prompt, run mongod.exe                           C:\Program Files\MongoDB\bin\mongod.exe  

This will start the MongoDB database process. If you get a message “waiting for connection” in the console output, it indicates that the mongodb.exe process is running successfully. Below is the sample snapshot.

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac - MongoD server

Note that default port is 27017.

2) Now, start the Mongo shell to play around with MongoDB basic commands.

To do this, Go to MongoDB folder –> Bin –> Double Click on mongo

Alternatively, if you want to start MongoDB shell through command prompt, run mongo.exe C:\mongodb\bin\mongo.exe  

Below is sample snapshot after starting MongoDB Shell.

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac - MongoDB shell

Note: MongoDB has a JavaScript shell that allows interaction with MongoDB instance from the command line. It is capable of running Arbitrary JavaScript program.

You should start MongoDB before starting the shell because the shell automatically attempts to connect to a MongoDB server on startup.

Basic  Commands To Play With MongoDB


To get a list of basic commands, type help() in MongoDB client. This will give you a list of basic commands. Below is the screenshot:

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac - help command

You can also write db.help() to get basic commands related to database.

Installing MongoDB on Windows & Mac 2

That’s all in this article. We will start MongoDB commands in the upcoming articles. Stay tuned!

Mohit Arora
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