Configure your MongoDB Connection

After installing Django MongoDB Backend and creating a MongoDB Atlas deployment, you can create a Django project that connects to MongoDB.

Create a Django project

From your shell, run the following command to create a new Django project called quickstart based on a custom template:

django-admin startproject quickstart --template https://github.com/mongodb-labs/django-mongodb-project/archive/refs/heads/5.0.x.zip

Note

Project Template

The django-mongodb-project template resembles the default Django project template but makes the following changes:

Includes MongoDB-specific migrations
Modifies the settings.py file to instruct Django to use an ObjectId value as each model's primary key

After running this command, your quickstart project has the following file structure:

quickstart/
   manage.py
   mongo_migrations/
       __init__.py
       contenttypes/
       auth/
       admin/
   quickstart/
       __init__.py
       apps.py
       settings.py
       urls.py
       asgi.py
       wsgi.py

Update your database settings

Open your settings.py file and navigate to the DATABASES setting. Replace this setting with the following code:

DATABASES = {
   "default": django_mongodb_backend.parse_uri("<connection string URI>"),
}

Replace the <connection string URI> placeholder with the connection string that you copied from the Create a Connection String step of this guide. This configures your Django app to connect to your Atlas deployment and access the sample_mflix sample database.

Start the server

To verify that you installed Django MongoDB Backend and correctly configured your project, run the following command from your project root:

python manage.py runserver

Then, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/. This page displays a "Congratulations!" message and an image of a rocket.

After completing these steps, you have a Django project configured to use MongoDB.

Back

Create a Connection String

Create an Application