RoboMongo, the ultimate graphic admin tool for MongoDB and Meteor

Introduction

When using MongoDB, I always end up on the CLI. Though, it is my natural way of interacting with codes, a nice UI may give me some perspective. It becomes more important when I start using a full stack JS like MEAN or Meteor, ...: "how did they structure their models?" is one of my first question and introspection. 

Robomongo from Paralect is a free open source administration tool for MongoDB. It is available on Linux, Windows and OSX. And, it is the perfect tool for playing with your instances.

Installation on OSX

As always, I'm using Homebrew and its Cask extension. Using the CLI over the basic installation DMG has the advantage of being reproducible when setting up many development environment granting the capability to use DevOps workflow instead of manual procedures. And... it is so easy:

brew cask install robomongo

Configuring for Meteor

Now, just fire up one of your JS full stack project. If you have followed my previous tutorial "Meteor walktrough: Samples from JSConf 2013", you should have an already ready for running project.

When executing Robomongo, it asks you where lays your MongoDB instance:

Just hit "Create" and use the port 3001 if you haven't modified your default MongoDB instance in Meteor:

Save it and connect to it. As you can see it on the first screenshot, you can browse your instance, use the an internal CLI to perform new operations, ... Note that the CLI has some interesting features such as completion that drastically increase the usability and the data mining.