Docker, NodeJS, MongoDB auto import data

3 min readOct 17, 2020

So I was working on a project that required me to automatically import data into my MongoDB Docker container. A lot of the tutorials online didn’t work for me or were overly complicated. So I decided to make a very simplistic solution that works.

So my project consists of a NodeJS server and MongoDB to hold the data. I want my MongoDB to auto initialize data on container startup.

Make sure you have docker installed.

SOURCE CODE: git clone && git checkout

git clone https://github.com/ottokafka/docker_nodejs_mongodb.git && git checkout mongodb_auto_import

docker-compose.yml

NodeJS Server

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const mongoose = require('mongoose');const PORT = 4000;// Dont use localhost:27017 - 
mongoose.connect('mongodb://database_mongodb:27017/mydb').then(() => console.log("connected to mongodb")).catch((err) => console.log(err))// Gives user a response when visiting localhost:4000
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
res.json({ "Whats up": "world" });
});// Starts up server and displays the port the server is running on
app.listen(PORT, function () {
console.log('Your node js server is running on PORT:', PORT);
})

MongoDB auto import script

mongoimport --db=mydb --collection=stuff --jsonArray --file=docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/data.json

This script is used in the docker-compose file. MongoDB auto executes any .sh or .js files in the docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ directory. We already added our data to that path so we’re good to go.

data.json

Node: this data is in the form of an json array. If you have just a json use — json instead of — jsonArray

[{
"_id": "5f1580241546d8643c995ed6",
"starts_at": "22:00",
"ends_at": "23:00"
},
{
"_id": "5f1580241546d8643c995ed7",
"starts_at": "23:00",
"ends_at": "24:00"
}]

Heres what my project directory structure looks like