Python MongoDB Setup

See setup guide to see how to install MongoDB.

Setting up Python and MongoDB are quite easy since Python has its own package manager.

To install mongodb lib for Python MAC OSX, you would do the following:

$ sudo env ARCHFLAGS='-arch i386 -arch x86_64'
$ python -m easy_install pymongo

To install Python MongoDB on Linux or Windows do the following:

$ easy_install pymongo

or

$ pip install pymongo

If you don't have easy_install on your Linux box you may have to do some sudo apt-get install python-setuptools or sudo yum install python-setuptools iterations, although it seems to be usually installed with most Linux distributions these days. If easy_install or pip is not installed on Windows, try reformatting your hard disk and installing a real OS, or if that is too inconvenient go here. The key here is to install pymongo.

Once you have it all setup, you will can create some code that is equivalent to the first console examples as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Python code listing part 1

Python does have literals for maps so working with Python is much closer to the JavaScript/Console from earlier than Java is. Like Java there are libraries for Python that work with MongoDB (MongoEngine, MongoKit, and more). Even executing queries is very close to the JavaScript experience as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Python code listing part 2

Here is the complete listing to make the cut and paste crowd (like me), happy.

Listing: Complete Python listing

import pymongo
from bson.objectid import ObjectId


connection = pymongo.Connection()

db = connection["tutorial"]
employees = db["employees"]

employees.insert({"name": "Lucas Hightower", 'gender':'m', 'phone':'520-555-1212', 'age':8})

cursor = db.employees.find()
for employee in db.employees.find():
    print employee


print employees.find({"name":"Rick Hightower"})[0]


cursor = employees.find({"age": {"$lt": 35}})
for employee in cursor:
     print "under 35: %s" % employee


diana = employees.find_one({"_id":ObjectId("4f984cce72320612f8f432bb")})
print "Diana %s" % diana

If you would like to learn more about MongoDB consider the following resources:

• Excellent MongoDB article on MongoDB written by one of Mammatus Technologies founder Rick Hightower
• MongoDB Training for Java Developers by Mammatus Technology
• MongoDB Training for PHP Developers by Mammatus Technology
• MongoDB Training for Python Developers by Mammatus Technology
• The official MongoDB tutorial at MongoDB.org.

The output for the Python example is as follows:

{u'gender': u'm', u'age': 42.0, u'_id': ObjectId('4f964d3000b5874e7a163895'), u'name': u'Rick Hightower', u'phone':
u'520-555-1212'} 

{u'gender': u'f', u'age': 30, u'_id': ObjectId('4f984cae72329d0ecd8716c8'), u'name': u'Diana Hightower', u'phone':
u'520-555-1212'} 

{u'gender': u'm', u'age': 8, u'_id': ObjectId('4f9e111980cbd54eea000000'), u'name': u'Lucas Hightower', u'phone':
u'520-555-1212'}