mongorilla

What is it?

Mongorilla is a simple CMS / Content Management System for MongoDB. But WAIT! it's something different than you have ever seen in other CMSs.

What makes it different?

Mongoorilla will store your data as it is directly in your Mongo database. What that means? ... No extra metadata, no complex structures, just the data with the structure you want. You only need to define a document structure/schema in a JSON config file, and Mongorilla will render the interface to CRUD rich documents in a simple fashion.

Advantages

• Mongorilla is written in well known technologies, NodeJS in the backend and Backbone and more in the front.
• The core functionality is quite simple, all the hard work rely on proved libraries such as Backbone-Forms, Mongoose and many others.
• Mongorilla supports multidimentional documents and ObjectId references.
• Mongorilla supports File/Image uploads against the same MongoDB using GridFS.
• Mongorilla supports rich text editors, CKEditor and Aloha comes out of the box.
• Mongorilla supports revisioning - rolling back document revisions is very easy!
• Setup is just to complete a JSON file under the config folder.
• Customize Mongorilla from the source code is not as terrible as other CMSs, even for tweaking forms, you can create your own editors.

Limitations

• This CMS is not intended to be public faced. It's just for trusted Content Managers, at least by now and for security reasons.
• Mongorilla is good for managing static content only. For collections that are managed by your own application and they have a specific business logic, then Mongorilla isn't your solution.

Architecture

The core application is based on NodeJS Express. It has a RESTful API with a unique endpoint which handles all the collections/documents. There's also a web interface and a JS endpoint for retrieve generated (runtime) javascript files such as Backbone Forms definitions and Backbone Model definitions.

Live Example

This example site contains exactly the same source as this repository has. We only pushed to heroku and set up the $MONGORILLA_MONGO_URL env var. The database on this example is stored in MongoHQ and there's no restriction on what you can edit through Mongorilla, so please, be a good person :).

http://mongorilla.herokuapp.com/ credentials: admin / 123 and test / 123

#Installation

• Clone this repository: $ git clone https://github.com/gerardobort/mongorilla.git
• Install the dependencies: (once in the repository folder) $ npm install
• Setup your MongoDB connection: $ export MONGORILLA_MONGO_URL="mongodb://localhost/my_mongorilla"
• Run the server instance: $ nodejs server.js
• First login: admin / 123
• Enjoy!

Roadmap

• Improve documentation, create "How to start", etc.
• Enhance the UI, visually and informationally,such as showing the dates better, etc.