Cloudflare Workers integration is now possible

Rishi_uttam · 2023-10-14T14:44:26.242Z

Hi Alex,

Wanted to check in to see if there was any progress of using the officials mongo driver now on cw workers? Is this something that the team is working towards (to have more support for node packages) or will workers always have this limitation…

We’re using the dataAPI which is slow, but works, moving forward would like a more permanent scalable solution.

Alex_Bjorlig · 2023-10-14T17:27:45.914Z

Disclaimer; I’m not affiliated with MongoDB - just a “normal” customer.

I hope/think MongoDB is really busy at the moment, making the official MongoDB driver compatible with the worker’s environment. Cloudflare recently shared this post, and the feature set is impressive. Combined with Cloudflare’s work on Hyperdrive - it seems like a lot of effort is being put into how to make initial connections fast. From the article:

…it maintains a set of regional database connection pools across Cloudflare’s network, so a Cloudflare Worker avoids making a fresh connection to a database on every request. Instead, the Worker can establish a connection to Hyperdrive (fast!), with Hyperdrive maintaining a pool of ready-to-go connections back to the database. Since a database can be anywhere from 30ms to (often) 300ms away over a single round-trip (let alone the seven or more you need for a new connection), having a pool of available connections dramatically reduces the latency issue that short-lived connections would otherwise suffer.

I hope MongoDB is actively working on:

Make the native node.js driver work on workers
In cooperation with Cloudflare offer “regional database connection pools”, so a Cloudflare Worker avoids making a fresh connection on every request.

Hopefully, we soon get more information - so MongoDB can be an attractive alternative to Hyperdrive/D1. Would be such a shame if MongoDB misses the open window they have right now to be an early adopter of the edge.

Rishi_uttam · 2023-10-15T04:06:20.534Z

Excellent post Alex. I do hope the Atlas team takes heed of this advice, many startups are looking towards serverless data base at the edge with a quick response time, and if Mongo fails to adapt with the tools that are already out there then consumers may depart to greener pastures.

Alex_Bjorlig · 2023-11-06T20:02:54.983Z

alexbevi:

We are working on improving this as it currently prevents users from using the MongoDB Node.js Driver in this environment at all. Once we have this functional and understand the implications for our developers we’ll have more information to share.

Any updates here? Would be incredible to see MongoDB moving fast in this space

alexbevi · 2023-11-06T20:46:01.681Z

Hi @Alex_Bjorlig,

We are working with Cloudflare on this still, however at the moment we are blocked as Atlas requires TLS for all connections, however Cloudflare Workers only supports mTLS at the moment (and TLS cannot be disabled in Altas).

Alex_Bjorlig · 2023-11-16T22:10:17.125Z

Thanks for providing an update
And is it completely unrealistic that Atlas could support mTLS somehow? Or is there another way to workaround this issue?

alexbevi · 2023-11-28T15:06:29.297Z

@Alex_Bjorlig the challenge for the moment is that with only mTLS available we cannot provide our own TLS certificate/key to the socket layer. This prevents us from being able to support connections to MongoDB Atlas clusters.

We’ll continue to work with Cloudflare on proper TLS support though, and share updates as they become available.

Alex_Bjorlig · 2024-01-09T08:51:07.327Z

Hi @alexbevi - I hope you had a great New Year

Do you think it’s realistic that some progress will happen on this TLS topic, or is it better that we start looking for a different solution?

alexbevi · 2024-01-09T22:03:56.501Z

Unfortunately I’m waiting for further info regarding Cloudflare’s roadmap for their Workers product. Once I know more we can schedule work on our end accordingly and share this out more broadly, but for now there’s been no further progress.

Nick_James · 2024-02-10T06:13:49.544Z

Hoping Cloudflare gets back to you soon I’m also really looking forward to using Mongodb with Cloudflare workers.

HelloImAlastair · 2024-02-11T13:40:15.633Z

@alexbevi just to check, does the Mongo Driver require some special variant of TLS? You should be able to enable regular TLS via the socket API like so:

const socket = connect("atlas.mongodb.com:27017", {
	secureTransport: "on" 
});

I know that URL/Port combo probably isn’t right, but you get the gist.
Documentation

alexbevi · 2024-02-12T15:35:07.597Z

Thanks for the feedback @HelloImAlastair, but the challenge we’re facing is that Cloudflare only supports Client authentication with mTLS - not TLS. Without the ability for Cloudflare Workers to provide client CA access within the Worker runtime we cannot provide secure connections to MongoDB Atlas from this environment.

valuein · 2024-04-25T07:02:22.228Z

Hi @alexbevi - I just got the error below which let me find this threat, and I was wondering if you had an update from Cloudflare, Nodejs, or MongoDB. Thanks!

[info] [nitro] Building Nuxt Nitro server (preset: cloudflare-pages)
[error] [nitro] Error: Cannot resolve “@aws-sdk/credential-providers” from “/opt/buildhome/repo/node_modules/.pnpm/mongodb@6.5.0/node_modules/mongodb/lib/deps.js” and externals are not allowed!

alexbevi · 2024-04-25T17:57:35.276Z

Hey @valuein,

Unfortunately nothing has changed. Cloudflare has assured us that this is a priority, but we don’t have a timeline from them as to when this will be available.

valuein · 2024-04-27T06:38:21.617Z

Let’s hope for the best then.
Any workaround for this issue in the meantime?

alexbevi · 2024-05-03T10:48:25.822Z

Until Cloudflare adds native support for TLS to their workers the workaround is to leverage MongoDB’s Data API instead (see Create a REST API with Cloudflare Workers and MongoDB Atlas | MongoDB for an example of this)

BlindChicken · 2024-05-13T07:11:14.704Z

You can also do this using a service binding with an RPC worker. One would still use Realm, but instead of making calls to the database via REST/http requests one can call methods directly from main app. It is explained in this blog post from Cloudflare.
We've added JavaScript-native RPC to Cloudflare Workers.
I build a test app based on todo-list example in the REST-API, I could share the code if anyone is interested.

Rishi_uttam · 2024-09-04T00:57:29.624Z

Hi MongoDB @BlindChicken, Please do share the code to connect to mongodb using cf workers.

I have been using the data api, and while it works with workers, the limitations such as the inability to perform simple queries such as findOneAndUpdate and the 2000 ms connection time is greatly limiting our decision to use Mongodb in future projects.

Even using serverless database option provided by cf, i belive the nodes are not distributed globally is that right?

Really looking to speed up Data API access or finding a driver that would work with cf workers. – your update would be appreciated.

Rishi_uttam · 2024-09-10T15:40:45.553Z

Now that MongoDB has suddenly deprecated Realm Sync and the DataAPI this leaves us in the dust. What are the alternatives? We may be switching over to cloudflare D1 or using hyperdrive with postgres to solve our solution. MongoDB please update the driver to support cloudflare workers.

Adam_Jeffries · 2024-09-11T11:41:22.187Z

This workaround is no longer viable with the Data API deprecation. Hopefully someone at Mongo can put a little pressure on Cloudflare to add TLS worker support.