mongoose vs mongodb (nodejs modules/extensions), which better? and why?

Question

I\'ve just arrived to Node.js and see that there are many libs to use with the MongoDB, the most popular seem to be these two: (mongoose and mongodb). Can I get pros and cons of

Answer 1

I have only used mongodb. In my personal opinion, I would recommend starting of with something low level and then moving up. Otherwise you may find yourself using the additional advanced features provided by higher level drivers like mongoose to no actual benefit.

The problem I have had with mongodb, which is endemic to node.js is the poor documentation. There is documentation and a lot of it but it isn't always the most helpful. That I have seen so far there are no good and thorough examples of production usage of the driver. The documentation is filled with the same templated example of open a connection, issue a command and close the connection. You can tell it's copy and pasted from a template because every example includes required for everything that might be needed rather than only what is needed for each example.

To give an example taken entirely at random:

• raw {Boolean, default:false}, perform operations using raw bson buffers.

What exactly does "perform operations using raw bson buffers" do? I can't find it explained anywhere and a Google search for that phrase doesn't help. Perhaps I could Google further but I shouldn't have to. The information should be there. Are there any performance, stability, integrity, compatibility, portability or functionally advantages for enabling/disabling this option? I really have no idea without diving deeply into the code and if you're in my boat that's a serious problem. I have a daemon where perfect persistence isn't required but the program needs to be very stable at runtime. I could assume this means that it expects me to deserialize and serialize to JSON or is something low level, internal and transparent to the user but I could be wrong. Although I tend to make good assumptions I cant rely on assumption and guesswork when making vital systems. So here I can either test my assertion with code or dig much deeper into Google or their code. As a one off this isn't so bad but I find my self in this situation many times when reading their documentation. The difference can mean days spent on a task versus hours. I need confirmation and the documentation barely gives me explanation, let alone confirmation.

The documentation is rushed. It doesn't explain events, gives vague details about when errors are thrown or the nature of those errors and there are often several ways to accomplish connectivity which can be unclear. You can get by and its not completely useless, but it is very rough around the edges. You'll find some things are left to guesswork and experimentation.