Monitoring Mongo for changes with Node.js

I'm using Node.js for some project work and I would like to monitor my Mongo database (collection) for changes, basically fire an event if something gets added.

Anyone know if this is possible? I'm using the node-mongodb-native d开发者_Go百科rivers.

If it's not I'd also like any available pointers on pushing data from the server (run with node) to the client browser.

The question is if all data is added to your database through your node.js app. If so, you can use the EventEmitter class of node.js to trigger an event (http://nodejs.org/api.html#eventemitter-14).

If the database is populated by some other app, things are getting difficult. In this case you would need something like a database trigger, which is AFAIK not yet availabled in MongoDB.

Pushing Events to the Client (aka Comet) will be possible once the HTML 5 websockets API makes its way into all major browsers.

In the meantime, you can only try to emulate this behaviour using techniques like (long-term) AJAX polling, forever frame etc. but each of them has its weaknesses.

I would turn on replication in your mongodb. There is a replicate? database that contains a list of changes, similar to the mysql replication log. You can monitor that.

-daniel

Almost 3y since the last answer. I would suggest looking at:

• Pub Sub for nodejs and MongoDB https://github.com/scttnlsn/mubsub

npm install mubsub should get you there

collection.insert({"key1":val1,"key2":"val2"}, function(err, info){
if(err){ //handle this } else{ if(info){

you call a fireandforgetfunction(info); here that can write to logs or send to SQS or do some other child spawn or in process thing. This could even be a callback but I think a fire and forget may do in most circumstances. I say fire and forget because I presume you don't need to hold up the response so you can return what ever you need to the client. And in part-answer to your other question you can return JSON like this

         db.close();
         var myJSON =[];                            
         sys.puts("Cool info stored and did a non blocking fire and forget for some other mongo monitoring stuff/process and sending control back to the browser");
         sys.puts(sys.inspect(info));//remove later
         myJSON.push({"status":"success"});                     
         myJSON.push({"key1":val1,"key2":val2});//or whatev you want to send
         res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type" : "text/plain" });
         res.write(JSON.stringify(myJSON));
         res.end();
        }
    }