Mongo is the official MongoDB driver for PHP.

MongoDB database needs a special driver to connect with it.

Here, PHP provides MongoDB driver to connect with MongoDB database

At Bobcares, we often get requests to install MongoDB PHP driver in Ubuntu as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s get into the details and see how our Support Engineers install MongoDB PHP driver in Ubuntu.

How we install MongoDB PHP driver in Ubuntu

The PHP driver consists of two components, it includes MongoDB extension and library.

Here, let’s see how our Support Engineers install the driver via PECL on the server.

1. To install PHP Mongo on Linux, we use the following command.

pecl install mongodb

2. Then we add the following line to php.ini.

echo "extension=mongodb.so" >> `php --ini | grep "Loaded Configuration" | sed -e "s|.*:\s*||"`

3. Next, we install the PHP library with Composer as follows.

composer require mongodb/mongodb

4. After that, we need to restart the Apache or Nginx. For Apache, we use the following command.

service apache2 reload

That’s it.

How we fix common driver errors

At Bobcares, where we have more than a decade of expertise in managing servers, we see many customers face problems while installing MongoDB PHP driver.

Now let’s see the major reasons for MongoDB errors and how our Support Engineers fix the top errors.

Missing package

Recently, one of our customers had an error while running the commandpecl install mongodb , the error said,

configure: error: Cannot find OpenSSL's libraries
ERROR: `/tmp/pear/temp/mongodb/configure --with-php-config=/usr/bin/php-config' failed

On checking, we found that the error was due to missing of a program like pkg-config

Therefore, we install it via the following command.

apt-get install pkg-config

This is how we fixed the error.

Incorrect settings

Similarly, another customer tried to install the MongoDB PHP driver on AWS Linux. When loading phpinfo(), there was no reference to Mongo. Also, when tried to run connection = new MongoClient(); he got an an error,

PHP Fatal error: Class 'MongoClient' not found in /var/www/html/mongo.php on line 3

By investigating, our Support Engineers found that he had put mongodb.so as a separate module in php.ini. So, we added the following lines to mongodb.ini.

cat << EOF > /etc/php5/mods-available/mongodb.ini
; priority=99
extension=mongodb.so
EOF
php5enmod mongodb

Then, we restarted apache and it worked fine.

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Conclusion

In short, PHP MongoDB driver in ubuntu helps to connect with the MongoDB database. Today, we saw the various reasons for MongoDB errors and how our Support Engineers fix them.