MongoDB is a document based database. Each document is a JSON like representation of fields and values. A document in MongoDB is roughly equivalent to a row in RDBMS table (MongoDB equivalent of table is Collection). Even though MongoDB does not enforce any predefined schema, the field objects in a document have certain data type. MongoDB data types are very much similar to Python’s primary data types. If one has to store object of Python’s user defined class, its attributes have to be manually parsed to equivalent MongoDB data types.

MongoEngine provides a convenient abstraction layer over PyMongo and maps each object of Document class to a document in MongoDB database. MongoEngine API has been developed by Hary Marr in August 2013. Latest version of MongoEngine is 0.19.1.

MongoEngine is to MongoDB what SQLAlchemy is to RDBMS databases. MongoEngine library provides a Document class that is used as base for defining custom class. Attributes of this class form the fields of MongoDB document. The Document class defines methods to perform CRUD operations. In subsequent topics, we shall learn how to use them.