mongoose vs mongodb (nodejs modules/extensions), which better? and why?

Question

I've just arrived to Node.js and see that there are many libs to use with the MongoDB, the most popular seem to be these two: (mongoose and mongodb). Can I get pros and cons of those extensions? Are there better alternatives to these two?

Edit: Found a new library that seems also interesting node-mongolian and is "Mongolian DeadBeef is an awesome Mongo DB node.js driver that attempts to closely approximate the mongodb shell." (readme.md)

https://github.com/marcello3d/node-mongolian

This is just to add more resources to new people that view this, so basically Mongolian its like an ODM...

Answer 1

Mongoose is higher level and uses the MongoDB driver (it's a dependency, check the package.json), so you'll be using that either way given those options. The question you should be asking yourself is, "Do I want to use the raw driver, or do I need an object-document modeling tool?" If you're looking for an object modeling (ODM, a counterpart to ORMs from the SQL world) tool to skip some lower level work, you want Mongoose.

If you want a driver, because you intend to break a lot of rules that an ODM might enforce, go with MongoDB. If you want a fast driver, and can live with some missing features, give Mongolian DeadBeef a try: https://github.com/marcello3d/node-mongolian