dev.to staff for The DEV Team

Posted on Dec 13, 2021

MongoDB Atlas Hackathon Help Thread

#atlashackathon #mongodb #help

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!

Top comments (125)

Soumya Ranjan Mohanty • Jan 13 '22

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) • Jan 14 '22 • Edited

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 • Jan 14 '22 • Edited

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 • Jan 14 '22

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

Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Jan 14 '22 • Edited

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 • Jan 14 '22

Thank you so much for clarifying that! :)

Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Jan 14 '22

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 • Jan 14 '22

Thanks for organizing the hackathon :)

Anika Tibrewala • Jan 14 '22

Thank you so much!

Valentine Sean Chanengeta • Jan 14 '22

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 • Jan 14 '22

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 • Jan 14 '22

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) • Jan 14 '22

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

Hina-softwareEngineer • Jan 15 '22

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

Soumya Ranjan Mohanty • Jan 14 '22 • Edited

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) • Jan 14 '22

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 • Jan 14 '22

Thank you so much!

Soumya Ranjan Mohanty • Jan 14 '22

Please reply to my query.

Abdul Samad • Jan 11 '22

Is there a way to call a realm function from nodejs file using the MongoClient instance. If not, what is the right package realm or realm-web for doing this.

Joel Lord • Jan 13 '22

Yes, you can use the realm-web package for this. To call a serverless function called sum with the arguments 2 and 3, you would use the following code:

const functionName = "sum";
const args = [2, 3];
const result = await user.callFunction(functionName, args);

You can find out more about how to use Realm functions in the documentation.

Abdul Samad • Jan 13 '22

thanks it worked.

Abdul Samad • Jan 11 '22

What I meant by MongoClient instance is the one which I used to query my Atlas database and collections.

Soumya Ranjan Mohanty • Jan 11 '22

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 • Jan 12 '22

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 • Jan 12 '22

Thank you, will try this 🙂

Valentine Sean Chanengeta • Jan 11 '22

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

Joel Lord • Jan 13 '22

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 • Jan 13 '22

The app has another third party service which requires authentication details

Adhir Kirtikar • Jan 12 '22

I have the same question...

Soumya Ranjan Mohanty • Jan 12 '22

+1 to the question.

Shaiju T • Dec 15 '21 • Edited

@thepracticaldev Can we take part as a team, And its ok to show the working application in github, and in local machine without hosting ?

Joel Lord • Dec 16 '21

Hi @shaijut,

Yes, you can definitely submit as a team. The more, the merrier, right? The prize will be sent to the person who posted the submissions, and you will need to work it out as a team.

For the application, it doesn’t need to be hosted anywhere, although you might want to look into Realm Hosting since using multiple services might make the judges happy 😜.

Whether you host the application or not, make sure that you provide detailed instructions on how to set up the application so that the judges can give it a try.

Shaiju T • Dec 16 '21

Thanks. 2 question.

In automation innovation can we try to automate thinks like mail support to bot based, my application will be security domain based ?
Does Mongo db has just key value store like redis, is there any specific product to store large number of links as values, to query faster ?

Joel Lord • Dec 16 '21

To your first question, the answer is yes! Anything that uses an Atlas Serveless instance (docs.atlas.mongodb.com/tutorial/cr...) will fit in this category.

For your second question, MongoDB offers a flexible data schema that can accommodate just about any type of data format. The speed of the query will depend on many different factors. I suggest that you start by exploring the data modeling intro from our docs (docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/data-...), or the talk “From Tables to Documents” (youtube.com/watch?v=j9N1dIVmV48).

Kacha • Dec 18 '21

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 • Jan 5 '22

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 • Jan 13 '22

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.

Rifky Niyas • Dec 19 '21

@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?

Trang Le • Dec 23 '21

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 • Jan 11 '22

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

Valentine Sean Chanengeta • Jan 6 '22

True I also need clarification on this

Shankar Wagh • Jan 7 '22

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 • Jan 10 '22

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 • Jan 9 '22

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

Manish Goyal • Dec 16 '21 • Edited

@thepracticaldev Do we have to make a web app as in website or can we make an android app?

Joel Lord • Dec 16 '21

Feel free to use whatever technology you’d like! The more creative, the better 🎉.

As long as you provide all the instructions for our judges to be able to test the application on their own, you can use any programming language or platform that you want.

Trang Le • Dec 23 '21

"test the application on their own": Should I provide instructions to use the app as an end user, or a developer?

简·多伊 • Jan 12 '22

I believe either should be fine. You can deploy your app to a cloud platform like Heroku or Netlify as a live demo and/or provide instructions in your Git repo README for the judges to run & test. Since open source licensing of the app's code is one of the requirements, I assume the judges are developers themselves who will be reviewing code & installing your app anyway.