Storing binary data in Mongo

So far, we saw how to store text values, dates, and numbers fields in a document. Binary content also needs to be stored at times in the database. Consider cases where users would need to store files in a database. In relational databases, the BLOB data type is most commonly used to address this requirement. MongoDB also supports binary contents to be stored in a document in the collection. The catch is that the total size of the document shouldn't exceed 16 MB, which is the upper limit of the document size as of the writing this book. In this recipe, we will store a small image file into Mongo's document and also retrieve it later. If the content you wish to store in MongoDB collections is greater than 16 MB, then MongoDB offers an out of the box solution called GridFS. We will see how to use GridFS in another recipe later in this chapter.

Getting ready

Look at the recipe Installing single node MongoDB in Chapter 1, Installing and Starting the Server and start...