Question

Problems connecting my function to mongoDB

Hello, I’m trying to connect my function with my database (also on digital ocean). I tried it with mongoose and mongodb, here are the codes:

mongoose

  try {
    // await mongoose.connect('mongodb+srv://my-digitalocean-url');

    mongoose.connect('mongodb+srv://my-digitalocean-url', (err) => {
      if (err) throw new Error(err);
      console.log(`MongoDB Connection: ${mongoose.connection.readyState}`);
    });

    // console.log(`MongoDB Connection: ${mongoose.connection.readyState}`);

    return {
      body: { 'MongoDB Connection': mongoose.connection.readyState },
    };
  } catch (error) {
    return {
      body: { Connected: false },
    };
  }

I tried both methods: using await, my function returns a timeout error, even though I set it to wait for 30 seconds in project.yml; using .then in the parameters, after 30 seconds it returns a status “connecting”.

mongodb

  const client = new MongoClient('mongodb+srv://my-digitalocean-url');

  try {
    await client.connect();

    // console.log(`Connected`);

    return { connected: true };
  } catch (e) {
    console.error(e);
    return {
      body: { error: 'There was a problem adding the data to the database.' },
      statusCode: 400,
    };
  } finally {
    await client.close();
  }

MongoDB always returns a timeout error.

But the strange thing is: exactly the same code works on my local machine using node (that’s what console.logs exist for). I literally used ctrl+c ctrl+v on this, what did I do wrong?


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Matt Welke
DigitalOcean Employee
DigitalOcean Employee badge
February 2, 2023

The code you posted doesn’t put the business logic into a function body. A deployed function must consist of a function defined at the top level of the file, called main. Example:

function main(event) {
  // business logic
}

Or, if package.json is used (because you want to use 3rd party libraries from NPM), it must be exported and called main. Example:

exports.main = function (event) {
  // business logic
}

In your case, you need to put the code that interacts with MongoDB, that starts with try {, inside the function body. And, you should put the code that requires the MongoDB library and the code that creates the MongoDB client (const client = new MongoClient('mongodb+srv://my-digitalocean-url');), outside of the function body, so that it only has to run during cold starts. That will make function execution as fast as possible once it’s warm.

Have a look at the sample functions for Node.js in our docs (https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/functions/quickstart/sample-functions/) to help you with this. And, be sure to let us know if you run into any other issues.

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