iStern Blog

My  colleague Brian Pedersen recently wrote at blog post about setting up MongoDB and starting it up with a simple bat-file read it here

http://briancaos.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/sitecore-and-xdb-setting-up-mongodb-on-your-developer-machine/

Combine the first step “download” mongo with starting a process as my other colleague Anders Laub showed how to do in his crush png post here http://laubplusco.net/crush-png-in-sitecore/

Then you have a pipeline that can start mongo if it isn’t running.

First lets create a new custom pipeline to start a mongo instance if none  is running

First the new “startmongodb” pipeline

<startmongodb>
  <processor type="Mongo.PingMongoDB, Mongo" />
  <processor type="Mongo.StartMongoDB, Mongo" />
</startmongodb>

  Replace string constant with more generic method, First a processor that test to see if mongo is allready running.

   public class PingMongoDB
    {
        public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            Log.Audit("Pinging Mongo", this);
            //Replace with connectionstring from config file
            var client = new MongoClient("mongodb://localhost");

           var server = client.GetServer();

            try
            {
              server.Ping();
              Log.Audit("Mongo Allready running", this);
              args.AbortPipeline();
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                Log.Audit("Mongo Not Running", this);
            }
        }
    }

 Now to the start mongo processor 

    public class StartMongoDB
    {
        public void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
            {
                CreateNoWindow = true,
                UseShellExecute = false,
                //Replace with path to  your mongo
                FileName = "D:\\MongoDB\\bin\\mongod.exe",
              //Replace with path to  your mongo datadrive
                Arguments = @"--dbpath sc75rev140429\Databases\MongoDBData",
                WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden
            };
            try
            {
                Log.Audit("Trying to start mongo",this);
                using (var exeProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(startInfo))
                {
                    exeProcess.WaitForExit(50);
                }
                Log.Audit("Mongo started", this);
            }
            catch (Exception exception)
            {
                Log.Error("Could not start mongo", exception, this);
            }
        }
    }

Finally we need to run the “startmongodb” pipeline when Sitecore Starts/Initialize so in

the initialize pipeline and at the end add 

<processor type="Mongo.RunMongoPipeline, Mongo" />

code for this simple processor

public class RunMongoPipeline
    {
        public void Process(PipelineArgs arg)
        {
            CorePipeline.Run("startmongodb",new PipelineArgs());
        }
    }

From the log we can now see if mongo isn’t runnnig and was started also there is now warnings in the log :
INFO AUDIT (default\Anonymous): Mongo Not Running
INFO AUDIT (default\Anonymous): Trying to start mongo
INFO AUDIT (default\Anonymous): Mongo started

so the follwing isn’t seen in the log which it would be if mongo wasn’t running

ERROR MongoDbDictionary.Store() has failed.
Exception: Sitecore.Analytics.DataAccess.DatabaseNotAvailableException
Message: Database not available
Source: Sitecore.Analytics.MongoDB
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Data.DataAccess.MongoDb.MongoDbCollection.Execute(Action action, ExceptionBehavior exceptionBehavior)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Data.DataAccess.MongoDb.MongoDbDictionary.Store(Object value)

What is left now is cleaning the code and use args for supplying the correct values instead of hardcoded strings. This is left as a free of charge  excercise.