📦 Use MongoDB Atlas

This article helps you to setup a database with MongoDB Atlas for your Notification Service. Before you can start, make sure that you have an account for MongoDB Atlas.

tip

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🔧 1. Setup your database

As this is a bit more complex, please follow the steps (parts) 1 to 4 of the official "Get Started with Atlas" article. After you completed 1 to 4, came back here and continue your setup.

Please note for the single steps:

• Part 1: Choose MongoDB Atlas
• Part 2: nothing :)
• Part 3: Click on Allow access from everywhere

caution

Warning from MongoDB Developer: you probably don't want to allow this type of access in a production environment. Instead, you'll want to identify the exact IP addresses you know your application will be hosted on and explicitly set which IP addresses, or IP ranges, should have access to your cluster.

• Part 4:
  • Choose a username as you like :)
  • Choose a strong password! and keep it, you will need it during the next steps

🔡 2. Get connection string from Atlas

Now it's time to get the connection string you will need for the .env-variable MONGO_HOST. It will look something like mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@clustername.mongodb.net/test?retryWrites=true&w=majority&useNewUrlParser=true&useUnifiedTopology=true.

1. In Clusters view, click Connect for the cluster to which you want to connect.
2. In Choose a connection method view, click Connect your application.
3. Select Node.js from the Driver dropdown.
4. Copy the provided connection string from the Connection String Only dialog tab.
5. Replace <dbname> or myFirstDatabase with moodle-notification-service.
6. Replace <password> with the password from cluster setup :) (Not the password of your MongoDB Atlas account!)
7. Save the link. You will need it during the next steps.

note

Note from docs.atlas.mongodb.com: The connection string displayed in the console uses a placeholder value for the password. Replace that placeholder with the password specified when you created your database user.

If the password contains reserved URI characters, you must escape the characters. For example, if your password is @bc123, you must escape the @ character when specifying the password in the connection string, such as %40bc123. To learn more, see Special characters in connection string password.

🔃 3. Update your environment variables

Open your .env file, set MONGO_HOST= to the string you got from 🔡 2. Get connection string from Atlas and append &ssl=true at the end.

Example:

...

MONGO_HOST=mongodb+srv://mydatabaseuser:SuperS3cur3P4ssw0rd@fmdbcluster.hmxhr.mongodb.net/notification-service?retryWrites=true&w=majority&ssl=true

...