Uploading Files to MongoDB with GridFS and Multer Using NodeJS, Nginx (web server) and mongo-express(Web-based MongoDB admin interface, written with Node.js and express)

GridFS is a specification that describes how to split files into chunks during storage and reassemble them during retrieval. The driver implementation of GridFS manages the operations and organization of the file storage.

You should use GridFS if the size of your file exceeds the BSON-document size limit of 16 megabytes.

GridFS organizes files in a bucket, a group of MongoDB collections that contain the chunks of files and descriptive information. Buckets contain the following collections, named using the convention defined in the GridFS specification:

• The chunks collection stores the binary file chunks.
• The files collection stores the file metadata.

When you create a new GridFS bucket, the driver creates the chunks and files collections, prefixed with the default bucket name fs, unless you specify a different name.

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​ Image source: mongodb.com

Using this packages:

• Mongoose (This package will translate the node.JS code to MongoDB)
• Config (It lets you define a set of default parameters, and extend them for different deployment environments.
• Express (You’ll need this package for any HTTP requests you want to run)
• BodyParser (This package lets you receive content from HTML forms)
• Multer (This package enables easy file upload into MongoDB
• Gridfs-stream (Easily stream files to and from MongoDB GridFS.)
• Multer-gridfs-storage (You need this package to implement the MongoDB GridFS feature with multer).

docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"
services:
  backend-file-server:
    image: file-server
    container_name: file-server
    build:
      context: .
    restart: on-failure
    depends_on: 
      - mongodb
    networks:
      - file-net
  mongodb:
    image: mongo:4.2
    container_name: mongodb
    restart: on-failure
    env_file: ./mongo_env
    volumes: 
      - ./mongo-data:/data/db
    networks:
      - file-net
  mongo-express:
    image: mongo-express:0.54.0
    container_name: mongo-express
    depends_on:
      - mongodb
    networks:
      - file-net
    env_file: ./mongo-express_env 
  nginx:
    image: nginx:1.21
    container_name: proxy_server
    restart: on-failure
    depends_on:
      - backend
    networks:
      - file-net
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - ./conf.d/:/etc/nginx/conf.d/
networks:
  file-net:

Dockerfile:

FROM node:14
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]

Run application:

Note: This instruction uses 'docker compose' version 2.

# Start Services
docker compose up -d --build
# Stop Services
docker compose down
# All Services Logs
docker compose logs -f
# Log a Specific Service
docker compose logs -f <Service_Name>