What is Node.js?

Node.js is a server−side platform built on Google Chrome”s JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine). Node.js was developed by Ryan Dahl in 2009 and its latest version is v0.10.36. The definition of Node.js as supplied by its official documentation is as follows −

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome”s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast and scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Node.js is an open source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and networking applications. Node.js applications are written in JavaScript, and can be run within the Node.js runtime on OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

Node.js also provides a rich library of various JavaScript modules which simplifies the development of web applications using Node.js to a great extent.

Node.js = Runtime Environment + JavaScript Library

mongodb

mongodb is node.js driver to connect and perform database operations on MongoDB. To install mongodb, run the following npm command.

npm install mongodb
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Creating/Connecting to Database

Once mongoClient is instantiated, its connect() method can be used to get connection to a database.

// MongoDBClient
const client = new MongoClient(url, { useUnifiedTopology: true });
// make a connection to the database
client.connect(function(error) {
   if (error) throw error;
   console.log("Connected!");
   // create or connect to database
   const db = client.db(database);
   // close the connection
   client.close();
});

In case database is not present then above command will create the same.

In subsequent chapters, we”ll see the various operations on MongoDB using Node.