Who has experience with Node.js and MongoDB?

mrgstiffler

mrgstiffler

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I'm trying to broaden my horizons and step outside my comfort zone. Started diving into Node.js and MongoDB. Both technologies require a different way of thinking than I'm used to, and there isn't much thorough information available. It's been interesting though.
 
There's a bunch of node.js videos on youtube and if you google for nodeconf you should be able to find videos on previous node conferences.

If you're just getting into node I would highly recommend giving this free book/tutorial a solid read:
http://www.nodebeginner.org/
 
That's actually a really good tutorial. It address my main gripe about other tutorials: None of them follow best practices. They lump all their code together without separating logic/views. The Node Beginner makes a point of writing maintainable code. Thanks for the link!
 
Yeah, it's one of the best. It gets you into the node mindset, doesn't overload you with 500 third party modules, and when you're done you feel like you actually learned something.

Next step would be to research 2 modules:

1. Express (used to handle routing, standard http functionality, views and template engines in a minimalistic/efficient way).
2. socket.io (if you want to start working with real time applications).

Both modules are very well maintained and documented. If you get bored browse TJ Holowaychuk's github profile (he's the author of express).
https://github.com/visionmedia

He's really good at what he does and you can be 99% sure he's doing just about everything the correct way.
 
I've been working primarily in Node for a couple of months now, even working on a native extension as a side project. I even got a paying gig to implement node/socket.io for a larger project.

Node is lots of fun to work with. I had worked primarily in flash/actionscript, so there wasn't a hug context shift when working asynchronously. I pass functions around as3 like candy. I've even shifted all my js to CoffeeScript for Node and I just find it fun to use and work in.
 
Had some time at work to finish up the Node Beginner tutorial. It was very good but short. The author looks at problems in the same way that I do. Ended up learning a ton about Javascript in general by reading through some of the articles he linked to and taking a look at the Formidable source. I see what you mean, odeo, about Node being fun. I have a sweet project in mind using the Raspberry Pi, Node.js and a 1-Wire setup.
 
If you want a real book to brush up on general javascript I'd probably go with:
JavaScript - The Definitive Guide 6th Edition

If I remember correctly about 60% of the book is general JS functionality that's not related to the browser at all.
 
Bumping this old thread. Started a project at work using NodeJS and MongoDB for a high availability application. It's a redesign of an application I did about 4 years ago. It's basically mapping and dispatch information being served to ~30 public safety vehicles and ~15 stationary clients. Comparing code performing the exact same function in Node with MongoDB to PHP with MySQL is pretty crazy. It's night and day how much better it is (although, the experience I've gained over the last 4 years also has something to do with that). Mongoose is extremely easy to work with, even though the documentation is pretty horrible. I like the flexibility that the query object provides. Middleware looks very useful, but I haven't done anything with it yet.

MongoDB's geospatial features are going to help quite a bit. Pretty excited at how easy they are to use.
 
I like working just on top of the mongodb native driver with a small wrapper to remove the callback soup that is known as the native driver. I felt mongoose had too strong opinions and the performance in some cases leaves a lot to be desired.
 
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