Connecting MongoDB

Insight O' Mate supports every mainstream way of running MongoDB.

Supported deployments

MongoDB Atlas — all tiers, including Serverless and Flex.
Self-hosted replica sets — 4.4 or newer.
Standalone (single node) — 4.4 or newer. Fine for dev; not recommended for prod.
Dockerized Mongo — just use the mongodb:// string the container exposes.

Older than 4.4? The app will refuse to connect. Aggregation features we rely on ($lookup with pipelines, $merge, time-series) aren't available on 4.2 and below.

Connection strings

Paste the standard SRV or non-SRV form into Settings → Databases:

mongodb+srv://iom-ro:<password>@cluster0.xxxxx.mongodb.net/

mongodb://iom-ro:<password>@127.0.0.1:27017/?directConnection=true

The app parses this locally and stores it in the OS keychain. It never leaves the machine.

Read-only roles

Strongly recommended. A read-only role stops an accidental $merge / $out from mutating your data if a prompt is misinterpreted.

Atlas

In Atlas → Database Access → Add New Database User, give the user the built-in readAnyDatabase role (or scope it tighter with a custom role on specific databases).

Self-hosted

use admin
db.createUser({
  user: "iom-ro",
  pwd: passwordPrompt(),
  roles: [{ role: "readAnyDatabase", db: "admin" }]
})

If you want to restrict further to a single DB:

use myapp
db.createUser({
  user: "iom-ro",
  pwd: passwordPrompt(),
  roles: [{ role: "read", db: "myapp" }]
})

What the app fetches

On connect, the app runs exactly these commands:

db.adminCommand({ listDatabases: 1 }) — lists databases you can read.
db.<name>.listCollections() — names and types only.
db.<name>.<coll>.findOne(..., { projection: {_id: 0} }) on a single sample doc so we can infer the schema.

That's it. No full table scans, no .find({}).toArray(), no sampling beyond one document per collection. If you want to see it happen, enable Settings → Advanced → Log outbound queries and watch the console.

Troubleshooting

"MongoServerSelectionError: connection timed out"

Atlas users: check your IP access list. The app connects from your machine, so you need your current IP (or 0.0.0.0/0 for dev only).
Self-hosted: is bindIp set correctly in mongod.conf?

"Authentication failed"

Double-check the user is on the right authSource. For Atlas it's typically admin; for custom deployments it might be the specific DB.

"Connected, but no collections show up"

The user doesn't have listCollections on that database. Re-check the role assignment.