Connect to the MongoDB Database

Introduction

The storage used so far isn’t persistent, and the authentication feature hasn’t been available. Let’s replace it with persistent storage using the MongoDB database and add the authentication feature using the JSON Web Token (JWT) mechanism.

Define a configuration

Note: The .env file is required if a local machine is used. However, it has already been set up for you on the Educative platform.

We start by defining the database configuration, including the database name and the MongoDB URI, inside the .env file. Make sure to define the MongoDB URI based on the type of MongoDB used.

Note: If MongoDB is used locally (or via Docker), the MongoDB URI is mongodb://localhost:27017.

If MongoDB Atlas is used, the MongoDB URI is mongodb+srv://... (the complete MongoDB URI can be seen in the MongoDB Atlas dashboard page).

DATABASE_NAME=gqlblog
MONGO_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017

Inside the .env file, we define the configuration for the JWT, including the JWT secret key and JWT secret key expiration time.

JWT_SECRET_KEY=mysecretkey
JWT_SECRET_KEY_EXPIRE_MINUTES_COUNT=15

Create a connection to the database

Before creating a connection to the database, we create a helper function to get the value from the .env file. We create the helper in the utils.go file inside the utils directory. This directory is located in the same location in the server.go file.