Installing MongoDB on Mac OS X

In this post we are going to see how to install mongoDB on a MAC. For now, we are not going to explain what mongoDB is or what its features are (we’ll leave that for later).

We have a few options for downloading mongoDB. The first one is to go to its website and, in the downloads section (Try MongoDB Atlas Products (MongoDB)), download mongoDB for your operating system, which in this case will be MAC.

The second option (the one we’ll follow in this tutorial) is to open a terminal and download the mongoDB version you want for MAC (in this case it will be version 2.4.6):

curl -O http://downloads.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.4.6.tgz

We unpack what we have downloaded with the following command:

tar xzf mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.4.6.tgz

We move what we have unpacked to the /usr/local/mongodb directory with the following command:

sudo mv mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.4.6 /usr/local/mongodb

After entering this command it will ask for the root password (that is, the password you use on your computer). Enter it and you’re done.

Then we create two new folders with the following command:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/mongodb_data /var/log/mongodb

We change the permissions of the following folder:

sudo chown -R root /usr/local/mongodb

Once you get to this point, you need to create a configuration file called "mongod.conf" with the following content:

# Store data alongside MongoDB instead of the default, /data/db/
dbpath = /usr/local/mongodb_data

# Only accept local connections
bind_ip = 127.0.0.1

You need to save this file at "/usr/local/mongodb/mongod.conf".

The next step is to register the mongoDB server on OS X. To do that, you need to create a file called "org.mongodb.mongod.plist" with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.mongodb.mongod</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/mongodb/bin/mongod</string>
    <string>run</string>
    <string>--config</string>
    <string>/usr/local/mongodb/mongod.conf</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/mongodb</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Once you have created this file, save it at "/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongodb.mongod.plist". Then run the following two commands to load the server (if you are in root mode, run only the second one):

sudo chown root /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongodb.mongod.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

At this point you should be able to access the following URL (http://localhost:28017) to see the status of the database.

Finally, you need to add the "bin" folder we downloaded to your PATH so you can use the binary files directly. We do this by running the following command:

sudo sh -c 'echo "/usr/local/mongodb/bin" > /etc/paths.d/mongodb'

Once you have done these steps, MongoDB should work. If you open a terminal and simply type "mongo", that terminal will switch to "shell mode" (what I just said is surely not accurate, but I say it so we understand each other) to work with mongoDB.

In upcoming posts we will talk about mongoDB and how to use it with JAVA.