Drupal MongoDB Integration
Overview
In this guide, you can learn about the benefits of using MongoDB Atlas as the database for Drupal sites.
Drupal is an open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP. Drupal provides simple content authoring, composability, and robust authentication features.
The Tutorial section of this guide links to a tutorial that you can follow to set up a Drupal site that connects to MongoDB Atlas.
The Resources section contains links to resources and documentation for further learning.
Why Use MongoDB as the Database for Drupal Sites?
Websites that seek to provide personalized user experiences must contain robust capabilities for user authentication. Sites that have many authenticated users might face performance impacts due to the complexity of retrieving entity data from multiple tables in a relational database. MongoDB eliminates the need for complicated table joins and thus increases data retrieval speed, enhancing user experience of components such as personalized dashboards and dynamic content feeds.
When you use MongoDB Atlas as your site's database, Drupal stores entity instances as JSON objects that contain all revisions, translations, and field data. This flexible data structure decreases latency and allows Drupal to support personalized, user-focused experiences.
MongoDB offers the following features that improve your Drupal sites:
Horizontal scaling: Distribute loads across multiple servers, making your database scalable for large user bases.
Integrated file storage: Store user files directly in the database instead of on the web server, simplifying hosting.
Full-text search: Avoid implementing separate search solutions by leveraging the Atlas Search feature.
AI capabilities: Perform vector searches and integrate AI services by using the Atlas Vector Search feature.
Tutorial
To learn how to install the MongoDB driver for Drupal and set up a site that uses MongoDB Atlas as its database, see the How to Run Drupal on MongoDB tutorial on the DEV Community website.
This tutorial demonstrates how to perform the following steps:
Setting up a MongoDB Atlas account and deployment.
Setting up an AWS EC2 medium instance.
Connecting the EC2 instance to Atlas.
Installing the following components:
Apache web server
Drupal web server
Drupal core patch
Connecting your Drupal site to Atlas.
Adding content to Drupal and viewing how it is stored in Atlas.
Safely shutting down your web server.
Resources
Learn more about Drupal and MongoDB by viewing the following resources: