The primary target for this article is to install the mongodb C++ driver for development with C++ projects.

There is a newer branch C++ 11 based driver at this point but it’s better to start with the stable legacy one.

In a normal fresh Linux system the following steps has to be go through to meet the driver building prerequisites. For a full instruction please refer to “https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-cxx-driver/wiki/Download-and-Compile-the-Legacy-Driver“.

Download and build/install Boost (Boost.org or Official Guide)

Driver require a boost version >= 1.49

tar -xzvf ./boost_1_xx_x.tar.gz
cd ./boost_1_xx_x/
./bootstrap.sh
./b2
sudo ./b2 install

Install Python if needed (Python.org)

Driver require a Python version > 2.0

Download and install Scons (Scons.org)

Install by RPM package or build from source.

rpm -uvh scons-x.x.x-x.noarch.rpm

Git is also needed to clone the mongo-cxx-driver

sudo yum install git

Or

sudo apt-get install git

Or
Git Official Guide

Build and Install the MongoDB C++ Driver

git clone git@github.com:mongodb/mongo-cxx-driver.git
cd ./mongo-cxx-driver
git checkout legacy
scons
sudo scons install

Important: After this step the include and lib were generated but NOT locate in proper location. Use a prefix option to build and install or move everything under /mongo-cxx-driver/build/install/ into /usr/local/

mv ./build/install/* /usr/local/

Time to build and test a sample program

Check if you have $LD_LIBRARY_PATH in valid value by

echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH

And if nothing is showed go export the lib path by

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Build the test program with

g++ tutorial.cpp -pthread -lmongoclient -lboost_thread -lboost_system -lboost_regex -o tutorial

Here is a great example to connect and insert into MongoDB: https://gist.github.com/brandondiamond/1528272. Note that a initialize() has to be added into the source to avoid a coredump.

int main() {
  mongo::client::initialize();
  ...
}

All set!

Everything is verified with:

• Boost_1_55_0
• Scons-2.3.5-1.noarh.rpm
• Mongo-cxx-driver branch legacy