We’re excited to announce that we are sponsoring Node Knockout for its third year! This has really become the event for showcasing the amazing teams and exciting ideas that currently exist in the Node.js community. Along with helping the Node Knockout event team, we are offering free MongoDB services for the event, assistance from our team as people get started and some cool prizes that total almost $20,000 dollars. Dizzang.

Getting Started

If you are participating in Node Knockout 2012 and plan to use MongoDB, it’s easy to get started. Just sign up for a MongoHQ account and select a free 512MB sandbox database plan and you are on your way.

Drivers and Code Examples

For drivers, using the Node MongoDB Native driver is recommended. Also, for an ORM, we suggest the Mongoose Project.

There is a nice tutorial for getting started wtih MongoDB and the Node driver. It should help answer basic questions and point you in the right direction.

If you are looking for code examples to get your application connected to your newly created database, we have docs for connecting to MongoDB with Nodethat are available for your use.

API

Thinking about bypassing the MongoDB driver and using a MongoDB-based API with your app? No problem. MongoHQ includes a useful REST-based API for doing basic MongoDB operations. While it will not have the full feature set and functionality of the drivers/ORMs listed above, it is a viable option for basic tasks.

Judges

The talent level of the participants that Node Knockout uses to judge applications seems to only get better each year. We wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few that we are most excited about.

• Christian Kvalheim (10gen)
• Arnout Kazemier (Nodejitsu)
• Reuben Katz / Christian Sanz (Geeklist)
• Aaron Heckmann (10gen)
• Cole Krumbholz (Backlift)
• Chris Matthieu (GetVocal, founder of Nodester)
• Jakub Nesetril (Apiary.io)

Previous Winners

Another really great aspect of our participation in Node Knockout has been to have the opportunity to support and be part of the story of a lot of cool teams and products. Here are just a few:

• Observer (Winner of Node Knockout 2011)
• Doodle or Die (Winner for Utility/Fun 2011)
• Chess@Home (Winner of Completeness 2011)
• Scrabb.ly (Winner of Popularity 2010)

As you can see from the participants and the teams from previous years, Node Knockout 2012 will be another great event. Kudos to the Node Knockout teamfor continuing to put on a well-organized gathering.