How to connect mongodb clients to local Meteor MongoDB

Question

How can I connect Robomongo (or any other mongodb client) to the mongodb instance that is created by my local Meteor application?

Answer 1

Ensure Meteor is running on localhost. Open a terminal window and run meteor command. It will start running on localhost:3000 if you have not changed to port.

While it is running, open a separate terminal window and run meteor mongo command. This will open up a MongoDB shell and tell you what port it is connecting to This is normally 3001 as of version 0.7.1.1 or 3002 if earlier. It will say something like 127.0.0.1:3001/meteor

Go to Robomongo (or your favorite mongodb client software) and create a new connection, making sure to change the connection address to localhost and the given the port number. No need to additionally define /meteor if your client does not insist on a default database.

Also as pointed out in https://stackoverflow.com/a/22023284/1064151 some drivers may need specific line endings, delimeters or other character flow. For example, ObjCMongoDB a C based driver wants the url to be 127.0.0.1:3001/ with that extra / at the end, or it won't work. So make sure you check the documentation for your driver/client.

Answer 2

Easiest way to get the current configuration details is to use the following command

meteor mongo -U 

This will give you the connection string