An introduction to using MongoDB with PHP. Walking through the basics of schema design, connecting to a DB, performing CRUD operations and queries in PHP. MongoDB runs great in the cloud, but there are some things you should know. In this session we'll explore scaling and performance characteristics of running Mongo in the cloud as well as best practices for running on platforms like Amazon EC2.

1. MongoDB, PHP & the Cloud

2. My name is
Steve Francia
@spf13

3. • 15+ years building the
internet
• Father, husband,
skateboarder
• Chief Solutions Architect @
10gen
• Author of upcoming O’Reilly
publication
“MongoDB and PHP”

4. Introduction to
MongoDB

5. Why MongoDB?

6. MongoDB Goals
• Open source
• Designed for today
• Today’s hardware / environments
• Today’s challenges
• Great developer experience
• Reliable
• Scalable

7. • Company behind MongoDB
• AGPL license, own copyrights, engineering
team
• support, consulting, commercial license
revenue
• Management
• Google/DoubleClick, Oracle, Apple, NetApp
• Funding: Sequoia, Union Square, Flybridge
• Offices in NYC, Redwood Shores & London
• 60+ employees

8. A bit of history

9. 1974
The relational database is created

12. 1979

13. 1979 1982-1996

14. 1979 1982-1996 1995

15. Computers in 1995
•Pentium 100 mhz
•10base T
•16 MB ram
•200 MB HD

16. Cloud in 1995
(Windows 95 cloud wallpaper)

17. Cell Phones in 2011
•Dual core 1.5 Ghz
•WiFi 802.11n (300+ Mbps)
•1 GB ram
•64GB Solid State

18. How about a DB
designed for today?

19. MongoDB philosophy
• Keep functionality when we can (key/
value stores are great, but we need more)
• Non-relational (no joins) makes scaling
horizontally practical
• Document data models are good
• Database technology should run
anywhere VMs, cloud, metal, etc

20. MongoDB is:
Application Document
Oriented
{ author: “steve”,
High date: new Date(),
text: “About MongoDB...”,
Performance tags: [“tech”, “database”]}
Fully
Consistent
Horizontally Scalable

21. Under the hood
•Written in C++
•Runs on nearly anything
•Data serialized to BSON
•Extensive use of memory-mapped files

22. Database Landscape

23. This has led
some to say
“
MongoDB has the best
features of key/ values
stores, document databases
and relational databases in
one.
John Nunemaker

24. Use Cases

25. CMS / Blog
Needs:
• Business needed modern data store for rapid development and
scale
Solution:
• Use PHP & MongoDB
Results:
• Real time statistics
• All data, images, etc stored together, easy access, easy
deployment, easy high availability
• No need for complex migrations
• Enabled very rapid development and growth

26. Photo Meta-Data
Problem:
• Business needed more flexibility than Oracle could deliver
Solution:
• Use MongoDB instead of Oracle
Results:
• Developed application in one sprint cycle
• 500% cost reduction compared to Oracle
• 900% performance improvement compared to Oracle

27. Customer Analytics
Problem:
• Deal with massive data volume across all customer sites
Solution:
• Use MongoDB to replace Google Analytics / Omniture options
Results:
• Less than one week to build prototype and prove business case
• Rapid deployment of new features

28. Online Dictionary
Problem:
• MySQL could not scale to handle their 5B+ documents
Solution:
• Switched from MySQL to MongoDB
Results:
• Massive simplification of code base
• Eliminated need for external caching system
• 20x performance improvement over MySQL

29. E-commerce
Problem:
• Multi-vertical E-commerce impossible to model (efficiently) in
RDBMS
Solution:
• Switched from MySQL to MongoDB
Results:
• Massive simplification of code base
• Rapidly build, halving time to market (and cost)
• Eliminated need for external caching system
• 50x+ improvement over MySQL

30. Tons more
Pretty much if you can use a RDMBS or Key/Value
MongoDB is a great fit

31. In Good Company

32. MongoDB in PHP

33. Relational made normalized
data look like this

34. Document databases make
normalized data look like this

35. Terminology
RDBMS Mongo
Table, View ➜ Collection
Row ➜ JSON Document
Index ➜ Index
Join ➜ Embedded Document
Partition ➜ Shard
Partition Key ➜ Shard Key

36. Tables to Documents
{
title: ‘MongoDB’,
contributors: [
{ name: ‘Eliot Horowitz’,
email: ‘eh@10gen.com’ },
{ name: ‘Dwight Merriman’,
email: ‘dm@10gen.com’ }
],
model: {
relational: false,
awesome: true
}
}

37. Documents to Arrays
{ array(
title: ‘MongoDB’, "title" => 'MongoDB',
"contributors" => array(
contributors: [ array(
{ name: ‘Eliot Horowitz’, 'name' => 'Eliot Horowitz',
email: ‘eh@10gen.com’ }, 'email' => 'eh@10gen.com'
),
{ name: ‘Dwight Merriman’, array(
email: ‘dm@10gen.com’ } 'name' => 'Dwight Merriman',
'email' => 'dm@10gen.com'
],
)
model: { ),
relational: false, "model" => array(
'relational' => false,
awesome: true 'awesome' => true
} )
} )

38. Documents to Objects
{ PostObject Object(
title: ‘MongoDB’, [title] => MongoDB
[contributors] => Array(
contributors: [ [0] => PersonObject Object(
{ name: ‘Eliot Horowitz’, [name] => Eliot Horowitz
email: ‘eh@10gen.com’ }, [email] => eh@10gen.com
)
{ name: ‘Dwight Merriman’, [1] => PersonObject Object(
email: ‘dm@10gen.com’ } [name] => Dwight Merriman
[email] => dm@10gen.com
],
)
model: { )
relational: false, [model] => ModelObject Object(
[relational] =>
awesome: true [awesome] => 1
} )
} )

39. MongoDB speaks
PHP

40. This has led
Matt to say
“
The single best interface
(API) of any php
extension.
Matthew Weier O'Phinney

41. PHP Driver
Installing the driver
$ pecl install mongo
Add to php.ini
extension = mongo.so

42. Connecting to the DB
$connection = new Mongo();
$db = $connection->selectDB('blog');
$posts = $db->post;
If the DB or collection doesn’t exist,
mongoDB will create it on connect.

43. Documents
Blog Post Document
$p1 = array("author" => "roger",
"date" => new MongoDate(),
"text" => "about mongoDB...",
"tags" => array('tech', 'databases')
);
$posts->save($p1);

44. Querying
print_r($posts->findOne());
Array(
[_id] => MongoId Object(
[$id] => 4e9796764a18173a17000000
)
[author] => roger
[date] => MongoDate Object(
[sec] => 1318557302
[usec] => 581000
)
[text] => about mongoDB...
[tags] => Array(
[0] => tech
Note: _id is unique, but can be anything
[1] => databases
you’d like
)
)

45. Querying
> db.posts.findOne()
> { _id : ObjectId("4c4ba5c0672c685e5e8aabf3"),
author : "roger",
date : "Sat Jul 24 2010 19:47:11",
text : "About MongoDB...",
tags : [ "tech", "databases" ] }
Note: _id is unique, but can be anything
you’d like

46. Inserting Objects
class PostObj {
public $comments = array();
public function __construct($author, $title, $content)
{
$this->author = $author;
$this->title = $title;
$this->content = $content;
}
}
$posts->insert(new PostObj("Steve",
"My first blog post",
"Hello, World!"));

47. MongoId
An autogenerated primary key
$x = array("foo" => 1, "bar" => 2);
$db->baz->save($x);
var_dump($x['_id']);
Result:
object(MongoId)#4 (1) {
["$id"]=> string(24) "4e9cc76a4a1817fd21000000"
}

48. MongoId
An autogenerated primary key
object(MongoId)#4 (1) {
["$id"]=> string(24) "4e9cc76a4a1817fd21000000"
}
4e9cc76a4a1817fd21000000
|------||----||--||----|
ts mac pid inc

49. Update Operations
$set, $unset, $inc, $push, $pushAll,
$pull, $pullAll, $bit
$change = array('$push' =>
array('comments' =>
array(
'author' => 'Fred',
'created' => new MongoDate(),
'comment' => 'Best post ever!.'
)
)
);
$posts->update(array("_id" => $id), $change);

50. Nested Documents
{ _id : ObjectId("4c4ba5c0672c685e5e8aabf3"),
author : "roger",
date : "Sat Apr 24 2011 19:47:11",
text : "About MongoDB...",
tags : [ "tech", "databases" ],
comments : [
{
author : "Fred",
date : "Sat Apr 25 2010 20:51:03 GMT-0700",
text : "Best Post Ever!"
}
]
}

51. Nested Documents
{ _id : ObjectId("4c4ba5c0672c685e5e8aabf3"),
author : "roger",
date : "Sat Apr 24 2011 19:47:11",
text : "About MongoDB...",
tags : [ "tech", "databases" ],
comments : [
{
author : "Fred",
date : "Sat Apr 25 2010 20:51:03 GMT-0700",
text : "Best Post Ever!"
}
]
}

52. Nested Documents
Array(
[_id] => MongoId Object (
[$id] => 4e9796764a18173a17000000
)
[author] => roger
[comments] => Array(
[0] => Array(
[author] => Fred
[created] => MongoDate Object(
[sec] => 1318899392
[usec] => 176000
)
[comment] => Dumb post.
)
)
[date] => MongoDate Object(
[sec] => 1318557302
[usec] => 581000
)
[tags] => Array(
[0] => tech
[1] => databases
)
[text] => about mongoDB...
)

53. Querying
$posts = $blog->find(array(
"author" => "Roger"));
$commentsByFred = $blog->find(array(
"comments.author" => "Fred"));
$commentsByFred = $blog->find(array(
"comments.author" =>
new MongoRegex("/fred/i")));

54. It’s all about the $
$ instead of >, <, =, etc.
$gt, $gte, $lt, $lte, $eq, $neq, $exists,
$set, $mod, $where, $in, $nin, $inc
$push, $pull, $pop, $pushAll, $popAll
$c->find(array("x" => array('$gt' => 4)));
$c->find(array("x" => array(“$gt” => 4)));

55. Adjust the behavior
in php.ini or using ini_set()
php.ini
---------------
mongo.cmd = ":"
$c->find(array("x" => array(':gt' => 4)));
or
ini_set("mongo.cmd", ".");
$c->find(array("x" => array('.gt' => 4)));

56. Indexing
including secondary and compound
indexes
$people->ensureIndex(array("age" => 1));
$people->ensureIndex(array(
"name" => -1,
"ts" => -1,
"comments.author" => 1
));

57. Cursors
$cursor = $c->find(array("foo" => "bar"))
foreach ($cursor as $id => $value) {
echo "$id: ";
var_dump( $value );
}
$a = iterator_to_array($cursor);

58. Paging
$page_num = 3;
$results_per_page = 10;
$cursor = $results->find()
->sort(array("ts" => -1))
->skip($page_num * $results_per_page)
->limit($results_per_page);

59. Grid FS

60. Storing Files
Under 16mb

61. Storing Big Files
>16mb stored in 16mb chunks

62. Storing Big Files
Works with replicated
and sharded systems

63. A better network FS
• GridFS files are seamlessly sharded & replicated.
• No OS constraints...
• No file size limits
• No naming constraints
• No folder limits
• Standard across different OSs
• MongoDB automatically generate the MD5 hash
of the file

64. Mongo
DB for the Cloud

65. Cloud vs Metal
•Commodity •Customizable
•Horizontal scale •Scale up or out
•RAM + CPU •Disk, RAM +
CPU
•Multi-tenant •Dedicated

66. IaaS

67. PaaS

68. MongoDB
Components

69. Replica Sets
Primary Primary Primary
Secondary Secondary Secondary
Secondary Arbiter Secondary
Secondary
Secondary

70. Sharding
App App App
Server Server Server
MongoS MongoS MongoS
ConfigD
ConfigD
ConfigD
MongoD MongoD MongoD MongoD
MongoD MongoD MongoD MongoD
MongoD MongoD MongoD MongoD

71. MongoDB on EC2

72. Amazon EC2
Instance Types
32-bit = Don’t Use
Typical MongoD
ConfigD / Arbiter
Big MongoD
32-bit = Don’t Use
High CPU not
necessary

73. OS
• Amazon OS now an option
• Turn off atime
• Raise file descriptor limits
cat >> /etc/security/limits.conf << EOF
* hard nofile 65536
* soft nofile 65536
EOF
• DO NOT use large VM pages
• Use ext4, xfs
• Use RAID
– RAID10 on MongoD
– RAID1 on ConfigDB
• Warning! Known problems with Ubuntu
10.04 & EBS
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ec2/+bug/
614853
– https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16991

74. http://spf13.com
http://github.com/spf13
@spf13
Questions?
download at mongodb.org
PS: We’re hiring!! Contact us at jobs@10gen.com