Get Started with the PHP Library

Install dependencies

Before you begin developing, ensure that you have the following dependencies installed on your local machine:

• PHP version 7.4 or later

• Composer version 2.0 or later

Install the MongoDB PHP extension

Run the following command to install the mongodb PHP extension:

sudo pecl install mongodb

Update your PHP configuration file

To enable the mongodb extension in your PHP configuration file, add the following line to the top of your php.ini file:

extension=mongodb.so

php --ini

Create a project directory

From your root directory, run the following command in your shell to create a directory called php-quickstart for this project:

mkdir php-quickstart

Select the tab corresponding to your operating system and run the following commands to create a quickstart.php application file in the php-quickstart directory:

cd php-quickstart
touch quickstart.php

cd php-quickstart
type nul > quickstart.php

Install the MongoDB PHP Library

To install the MongoDB PHP Library, run the following command in your php-quickstart directory:

composer require mongodb/mongodb

After installing the library, include Composer's autoload.php file by adding the following code to the top of your quickstart.php file:

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

Create a free MongoDB deployment on Atlas

Complete the Get Started with Atlas guide to set up a new Atlas account and load sample data into a new free tier MongoDB deployment.

Save your credentials

After you create your database user, save that user's username and password to a safe location for use in an upcoming step.

Find your MongoDB Atlas Connection String

To retrieve your connection string for the deployment that you created in the previous step, log in to your Atlas account and navigate to the Database section and click the Connect button for your new deployment.

Then, select your user from the Select database user selection menu. Select "PHP" from the Driver selection menu and the version that best matches the version you installed from the Version selection menu.

Select the String tab in the Add connection string into your application code step to view only the connection string.

Copy your Connection String

Click the button on the right of the connection string to copy it to your clipboard, as shown in the following screenshot:

Update the Placeholders

Paste this connection string into a file in your preferred text editor and replace the <username> and <password> placeholders with your database user's username and password.

Save this file to a safe location for use in the next step.

Edit your PHP application file

Copy and paste the following code into the quickstart.php file, which queries the movies collection in the sample_mflix database:

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
use MongoDB\Client;
$uri = getenv('MONGODB_URI') ?: throw new RuntimeException(
    'Set the MONGODB_URI environment variable to your Atlas URI'
);
$client = new MongoDB\Client($uri);
$collection = $client->sample_mflix->movies;
$filter = ['title' => 'The Shawshank Redemption'];
$result = $collection->findOne($filter);
if ($result) {
    echo json_encode($result, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
} else {
    echo 'Document not found';
}

Assign the connection string

Assign the MONGODB_URI environment variable to the connection string that you copied from the Create a Connection String step of this guide. You can assign this variable by running a shell command or creating a .env file in your application, as show in the following tabs:

export MONGODB_URI=<connection string>

MONGODB_URI=<connection string>

Run your PHP application

In your project directory, run the following shell command to start the application:

php quickstart.php

The command line output contains details about the retrieved movie document:

{
    "_id": {
        "$oid": "..."
    },
    ...
   "rated": "R",
   "metacritic": 80,
   "title": "The Shawshank Redemption",
   ...
}

If you encounter an error or see no output, ensure that you assigned the proper connection string to the MONGODB_URI environment variable and that you loaded the sample data.