How to copy a Mongo database to another, the fast way

Hello everyone,

I am working on a Node.js/Express/Mongo app.

I have 2 environments :

• production environment, which connects to a ‘production’ Mongo database

• development environment, which connects to a ‘development’ Mongo database

Both databases ‘production’ and ‘development’ are hosted in Mongo Cloud Atlas.

Note : today, the two databases are in the very same cluster, but I could create a second cluster if needed to solve my issue.

I regularly have to fix bugs, and every time it happens, I want to copy the data in the production database to the development database, so that I can replicate in my dev environment the issue viewed in production.

My question is : how can I copy the production database to the dev database (replacing data in the dev database) in the fastest way possible ?

Today, I am exporting/importing (via JSON file) the collection one by one, which is obviously not satisfying.

I also managed to write a script that I run on Mongo Playground in VSCode.

But I have a lot of collections, some of them are a bit “fat”, so the script is extremely long (=> not an acceptable solution).

I suppose I am running through a very common problem, and that there should be a standard solution here.

How should I manage this ?

Hello John_Sewell, Thank you for your reply,

I wouldn’t mind using mongodump only if I see a difference in execution time for the transfer.

But a solution that doesn’t require me to temporarily store my data locally would be a better solution for me, I think.

You mentioned talking to Mongo about this, how can I contact him?

Hello,

I was able to try mongodump with mongorestore, it took me about 2min to transfer the data. The problem is that I haven’t yet found any other way of having to drop the data on my development environment in order to be able to update the data.

Then I followed your other suggestion with $out, and it took me much less time to transfer the data. However, I don’t think my boss will like this method. It forces me to write a script. Unless there’s another way of using $out?

Please calm down, I could be wrong about what he told me too. It seemed to me that he wanted something other than a script, if that’s the best solution then I obviously want to believe him and he’ll believe it too. In any case, I lack knowledge of MongoDB and that’s why I’ve come to you. But please, be respectful.