MongoDB Atlas Hackathon Help Thread

If you're participating in the MongoDB Atlas Hackathon and you need some help with your submission, welcome! You are in the right place and we're excited to help.

If you have any questions about how this contest works (ex: due dates, how to post your submission, picking a category, etc.) the DEV team will be happy to assist you.

If you are running into issues or get stuck when it comes to using MongoDB, we will surface all technical questions for the MongoDB team and answer here on their behalf!

Please comment below if you need asynchronous assistance with the MongoDB Atlas Hackathon ❤️

P.S. If you'd like to share an update on the progress you're making on your project or if you'd like to connect with other participants, please do so in the community update thread!

Comments

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Hi @mongodb_staff and @thepracticaldev , when will the hackathon be over i.e. the last time to complete the hackathon. Is it 13 Jan 2022 11:59 pm PT or 13 Jan 2022 11:59 pm UTC?

In the announcement article, both times can be seen written.
The PT time is mentioned in "Additional rules"
The UTC time is mentioned in "Important dates".

Please clarify as I don't want to miss out on the opportunity and miss submitting my project.

[Gracie Gregory (she/her)]

So sorry for any confusion. The deadline was 13 Jan, 2022 at 11:59 UTC — however we misrepresented this initially so we will be counting all submissions that we receive through 7:59 AM UTC on January 14

[Anika Tibrewala]

Hi, kindly consider our project, we submitted project following the deadline "Submissions are due on January 13th, 2022 @ 11:59 PM PT/2 AM ET on January 14th, 2022/6 AM UTC on January 14th, 2022" as shared previously. We've put in a lot of effort in our project, requesting you to kindly consider the submission for the hackathon.

[Valentine Sean Chanengeta]

Same this side, I was relying on the submission template deadline

[Gracie Gregory (she/her)]

Hi everyone! So sorry for this confusion and for the errors in the announcement post. There were mistakes with the deadline as it was originally written and I sincerely apologize.

We will consider all entries submitted up until January 13th, 2022 @ 11:59 PM PT/2:59 AM ET on January 14/7:59 AM UTC on January 14, 2022. Not to worry! @valentinesean22, @hinasoftwareengineer, @geekysrm

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Thank you so much for clarifying that! :)

[Gracie Gregory (she/her)]

Of course. I hate to think that this mistake on my end caused you all stress. Thank you for participating! We will make sure that this mistake doesn't happen again in future hackathons.

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Thanks for organizing the hackathon :)

[Anika Tibrewala]

Thank you so much!

[Valentine Sean Chanengeta]

You are welcome. And thank you for the provision of such an opportunity, I learnt a lot and I am still learning. I am looking forward for other many events in the future.

[Hina-softwareEngineer]

Hi Gracie, I have seen this now and submitted my post a little while ago and i am so worried to see that the mentioned date in artilce is wrong as you are saying 12 Jan utc. I was considering the 13 Jan 11:59 pm PT time from the article.

[Hina-softwareEngineer]

Kindly consider the posts till 11:59PM PT as this was due to the confusion of the dates. As we all have spent many hours on buildling the useful applications.

[Gracie Gregory (she/her)]

Don't worry! Your submission will be counted because the error was on our end!

[Hina-softwareEngineer]

Thank you so much Gracie for clarifying and organizaing this hackathon :). Looking forward for more hackathons.

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

12 Jan? 😟
I haven't yet submitted and the post was (is) saying till 13th Jan.
And I can see people submitting after 12th as well.

[Gracie Gregory (she/her)]

So sorry. I have made a few errors here. Corrected my comment to reflect the correct information. The important thing is that your project will be counted as long as we received it through 7:59 AM UTC on January 14

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Thank you so much!

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Please reply to my query.

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Hi, I have most of the server side logic for my app inside Realm Functions which I wrote using the UI Editor. How do I show that code in GitHub repo?
Do I create a folder called realm_functions and put all function codes there in separate files?

[Julien]

Hi, you can use the realm-cli and do realm-cli pull to get your project on your disk 😉

docs.mongodb.com/realm/cli/realm-c...

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

Thank you, will try this 🙂

[简·多伊]

Can I include and refactor broken/hacky code that I'd written previously? I'd like to try again for this hackathon since I failed the last time. Hopefully this time I can manage to stay focused and build a working app with MongoDB on the backend. This will be my first time learning and working with MongoDB Atlas tools. Please let me know if this is allowed or not. Thanks

[Trang Le]

I'm not from MongoDB but I don't see why not since most apps are built by remixing existing apps. Most hackathon winners have been in the trench for donkey's years, so I think the more hackathons you participate in, the higher chance you'll win.

[简·多伊]

Thanks Trang! It's too late for me to participate 😅
Good luck in the contest! 🙂

[Rifky Niyas]

@thepracticaldev Hi, I need some help regarding categorizing our application. What if there are functionalities that suit one or more of the mentioned categories? Should we mention a specific one or all the suited categories or in the fifth category? The fifth category is for applications that doesn't fit any of the other four categories right?

[Valentine Sean Chanengeta]

True I also need clarification on this

[Trang Le]

Usually, for the last category, they're looking for a very wacky implementation, the one that would get featured on Codepen and make you say: "Cool. But what do I use it for?"

[Ishan Tiwari]

The whacky is for projects that have some use for sure but not a very common one. Like a chat app a e-commerce app. That should have a untraditional use

[Shankar Wagh]

Hello, I have created mongodb account but which cluster i have to select free or any other?
And second question I don't have credit card, is there any other option?
Otherwise I have to leave this hackthon.😥😥

[Joel Lord]

Hi!
You can create a free cluster by following the instructions here: docs.atlas.mongodb.com/tutorial/de.... The free tier will give you access to most of the features that you need to build your application.

Looking forward to seeing your submission!

[Julien]

Hi, free cluster does not require a credit card. I use this one personnaly

[Jackson Kasi]

please me help anyone. nodemailer failed to excite on MongoDB Realm... how to fix?
more info: stackoverflow.com/q/70696512/14395392

[Joel Lord]

You will need to add nodemailer as a dependency. I've provided more details on StackOverflow.

[Jackson Kasi]

sir, I am already add dependencies "nodemailer" . but still same error

[Jackson Kasi]

sir now no problem, nodemailer 6.4.10 version is support on mongodb realm

[Faith Morante]

Hi! I can't seem to make HTTPS Endpoints work with Postman, I didnt add any additional authorization, and also tried using API Keys and I always get same error response:

{
    "error": "no authentication methods were specified",
    "error_code": "InvalidParameter"
}

[Faith Morante]

I got it now! The function setting for Authentication should be set to System

[Kacha]

Hi @thepracticaldev , I'd love some help from the MongoDB team or anyone who has come across this. I have a realm app with email/password authentication enabled and I have a react native app that does sign up and sign in.
When using the sign in method from the realm library:

const creds = Realm.Credentials.emailPassword(email, password);
const user = await Realm.app.logIn(creds);

when I console log the user I get an empty object { } but when I call user.id I get the id of the user object. I'm not entirely sure what I have done wrong but I think this is causing further errors because I am getting an error when I try to open a realm connection with this user.
Any help would be great.

[Joel Lord]

Hi,

For more technical questions, you might want to try to search or post on our community forums (mongodb.com/community/forums/), you will normally get a quicker answer there. As for your question, you could try creating an object that contains your application, and then use the methods for this application. Right now, I’m not sure if your Realm.app is an initialized property. You could try this out:

const app = new Realm.App({ id: "<APP_ID>" });
const credentials = Realm.Credentials.emailPassword(email, password);
const user = await app.login(credentials);
const userProfile = app.currentUser;
const userId = app.currentUser.id;

I hope this helps!

[Valentine Sean Chanengeta]

If I write code with ENV variables like passwords, how will Mongo judges get those variables so they can run the app?

[Joel Lord]

We will run the application on our own cluster so you don't need to provide us with your credentials.

In order for us to configure our clusters, please provide a sample of the data or the realm application export file (docs.mongodb.com/realm/cli/realm-c...), along with any necessary instructions such as how to configure the ENV variables for us to setup the project.

[Valentine Sean Chanengeta]

The app has another third party service which requires authentication details

[Adhir Kirtikar]

I have the same question...

[Soumya Ranjan Mohanty]

+1 to the question.

[Kacha]

Hi, I'd like some help understanding something in the realm data schema.
In what scenario would we use the relationships.json under the mongo-atlas schema in data-sources?
Why use this relationships file instead of just using embedding or adding a field with an objectId referencing another collection.

I hope I have asked that semi-coherently.

[Joel Lord]

Hi!

I think I would need more information before I can answer this question. Also, for more technical questions, you might want to try to search or post on our community forums (mongodb.com/community/forums/), you will normally get a quicker answer there.

Regarding the use of relationships or embedding fields, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The general rule of thumbs is that if data is accessed together, it should be stored together. You can find out more information about data modeling in our docs (docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/data-...), or watch the talk “From Tables to Documents” (youtube.com/watch?v=j9N1dIVmV48).

I hope this helps.

[Sumedha Mehta]

Hi - I'm from the Realm Team! You're pretty much correct. The relationships defined in Realm let you easily reference fields in another collection to define your relationships instead of having to embed them in your documents. This is especially valuable when using services like Realm's Hosted GraphQL API or Realm Sync because we will automatically resolve the relationship for you without having to do a $lookup or another query.