Getting started with MongoDB in Asp.Net Core

Introduction

In this article we will discuss on the procedures to build a simple application in Asp.Net Core which communicates with MongoDB database.

Description

This application will do the CRUD operation on a Mongo database and then displays the details in a table.

ThirdPartyTool Used

Robo 3T – is a third party tool which provides a lightweight MongoDB management tool

Implementation

Setting up MongoDB:

If you have not installed the mongodb exe then download and install the same from MongoDB Download Center

After installation of the database, in order to access the mongodb we have to start the MongoDB Process.

To start MongoDB, run mongod.exe in command prompt. Make sure you are running the command prompt from installation folder of Mongodb.  By default installation path is set as C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.6\bin\

Additionally we need a data directory to store all data in MongoDB. User can set the path for data files using the –dbpath option to mongod.exe

You can begin using the Robo 3T after starting mongodb process.

For this demo I have created a Collections namely Customer with 3 columns

Since the database is ready now we will start building the application. Follow along the article to create sample application

Below is a sample demonstration of the application we are going to make

Create a new Project in Visual Studio

And Select the Template for Asp.Net Core MVC Web Application

To interact with MongoDB from c# code, we need to install .NET MongoDB Driver which provides asynchronous interaction with MongoDB.  I utilized the below nugget commands to add driver into my project

Model Class

Lets make an entity class called “Customer” which fits the schema of the Customer table in the database

The class contains Id property of the type ObjectId. This property is used to match an item in MongoDB collections. We as well have another attribute, namely BsonElement which is applied to represent an “element” in the MongoDB collection.

Controller Methods

In Controller we will add code for reading, editing, creating and deleting records from MongoDB.  I have moved the code to retrieve the mongodb database details to a common method.

Views Code

Since this was a more of a MongoDB demo I have used the scaffolding option available with MVC to generate View. You can modify this as per your needs.

Index View

Create View

Delete View

Details View

Edit View

Conclusion

In this article we have looked into procedures to create a simple application in MVC Core using MongoDB as database.

You can download the source code for Asp.NetCoreMVCMongoDBDemo from GitHub.

 

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