Installation

The recommended way to get started using the Node.js 2.0 driver is by using NPM (Node Package Manager) to install the dependency in your project.

MongoDB Driver

After you’ve created your project with npm init, you can install the MongoDB driver and its dependencies with the command:

npm install mongodb --save

This will download the MongoDB driver and add a dependency entry in your package.json file.

Troubleshooting

The MongoDB driver depends on several other packages, including:

• mongodb-core
• bson
• kerberos
• bson-ext
• node-gyp

The kerberos and bson-ext extensions are native C++ extension. These are optional extensions and are not required for the driver to function.

bson-ext Module

The bson-ext module is an alternative BSON parser that is written in C++. It delivers better deserialization performance and similar or somewhat better serialization performance to the pure javascript parser.

If you wish to use the bson-ext module you will need to add the bson-ext module to your module’s dependencies.

npm install bson-ext --save

kerberos Module

If you need to use kerberos module you will need to add the kerberos module to your module’s dependencies.

npm install kerberos --save

The kerberos package is a C++ extension that requires a build environment to be installed on your system. You must be able to build Node.js itself to be able to compile and install the kerberos module. Furthermore the kerberos module requires the MIT Kerberos package to correctly compile on UNIX operating systems. Consult your UNIX operating system package manager for what libraries to install.

Diagnosing on UNIX

If you don’t have the build essentials it won’t build. In the case of linux you will need gcc and g++, Node.js with all the headers and Python. The easiest way to figure out what’s missing is by trying to build the kerberos project. You can do this by performing the following steps.

git clone https://github.com/christkv/kerberos.git
cd kerberos
npm install

If all the steps complete you have the right toolchain installed. If you get node-gyp not found you need to install it globally by doing:

npm install -g node-gyp

If it compiles correctly, you’re ready to proceed. You can now try to install the MongoDB driver with the following command:

cd yourproject
npm install mongodb --save

If it still fails the next step is to examine the npm log. Re-run the command in verbose mode.

npm --loglevel verbose install mongodb

This will print out all the steps npm is performing while trying to install the module.

Diagnosing on Windows

A compiler toolchain known to work for compiling kerberos on Windows is the following:

• Visual Studio 2010 (do not use higher versions)
• Windows 7 64bit SDK
• Python 2.7 or higher

Open Visual Studio command prompt. Ensure node.exe is in your path and install node-gyp.

npm install -g node-gyp

Next you will have to build the project manually to test it. Use any tool you use with git and grab the repo.

git clone https://github.com/christkv/kerberos.git
cd kerberos
npm install
node-gyp rebuild

This should rebuild the driver successfully if you have everything set up correctly.

Other possible issues

If Python is installed incorrectly, it can cause problems for gyp. It’s a good idea to test your deployment environment first by trying to build Node.js itself on the server in question, as this should unearth any issues with broken packages (and there are a lot of broken packages out there).

Another thing is to ensure your user has write permission to wherever the Node.js modules are being installed.