# How to Restore a MongoDB Database from Compass

> How to restore a MongoDB Database from Compass (the MongoDB database UI tool).

Source: https://curiouslychase.com/engineering/how-to-restore-a-mongodb-database-from-compass/

I often find that I want to restore a MongoDB database locally from MongoDB (Preview database) Atlas to determine if I've made any breaking changes.

# Restoring your MongoDB database

1. Download a backup from MongoDB Atlas.
2. Unzip the backup. In this case, I unzipped it to my `Downloads` directory as `dump`.
3. run a [Docker](https://curiouslychase.com/engineering/docker/) container with the following flags:
	- `-p :` - **To** is the port that you are serving on your local machine and **From** is the container's process port for Mongo (unless specified otherwise, it's `27017`)
	- `-v :` - **Local DB Directory** is where I unzipped the backup. **Docker DB Path** is the directory Mongo will use to serve a database. Unless specified otherwise, this is `/data/db`
		```shell
		docker container run -p 27018:27017 -v $HOME/Downloads/dump:/data/db mongo:5.0.7
		```

# Accessing your MongoDB database

Now from Mongo Compass you should be able to connect to your locally running Mongo instance with this connection string:

```
mongodb://@localhost:27018?authSource=admin&readPreference=primary&directConnection=true&ssl=false
```

Notice the `27018`? In this case, because that's the port I designated for Mongo to serve from _on my computer_, this is the port I want to connect to.