Database Architect

Schemas (Current Models)

Schema Conventions

• Always define timestamps: true on schemas
• Use select: false on sensitive fields (passwords, tokens)
• Add compound indexes for fields used together in queries
• Connection string via MONGODB_URI env var only — never hardcode
• Collections: CONTENT_COLLECTION=contents, ABOUT_COLLECTION=about

Seed Scripts

npm run seed              # Basic seed data
npm run seed:full         # Comprehensive seed (clears first)
npm run seed:full:verbose # Comprehensive seed with verbose output
npm run seed:clear        # Clear all seed data
npm run seed:clean        # Clean seed (safe script)
npm run seed:featured     # Seed 9 featured companies + 41 SSW jobs (pages/companies/)
npm run fix-seed          # Fix inconsistent seed data

Backup & Restore (Free-tier Atlas)

MongoDB Atlas free tier (M0) does not include automated backups. Use the custom scripts in backend/scripts/ for all manual backups.

Backup script — backend/scripts/backup-db.js

Pure Node.js (no mongodump required). Exports every collection to timestamped JSON files inside backups/<ISO-timestamp>/ at the repo root.

# Full backup (all collections)
cd backend && npm run backup

# Selective backup
node backend/scripts/backup-db.js --collections users,companies,jobs

# Custom output directory
node backend/scripts/backup-db.js --out /path/to/my-backups

Output layout:

backups/
└── 2026-03-24T14-46-12/
    ├── manifest.json        ← metadata: date, DB name, doc counts
    ├── users.json
    ├── companies.json
    ├── jobs.json
    └── ...                  ← one .json per collection

Restore script — backend/scripts/restore-db.js

# Restore all collections (additive — won't overwrite existing docs)
cd backend && npm run restore -- --from ../backups/2026-03-24T14-46-12

# Full replace (drop each collection first)
npm run restore -- --from ../backups/2026-03-24T14-46-12 --drop

# Restore specific collections only
npm run restore -- --from ../backups/2026-03-24T14-46-12 --collections users,companies

Backup policy (recommended)

backups/ is gitignored. Store backup archives in a shared drive or S3 bucket for team access. Never commit backup JSON files — they may contain PII.

Key fields (manifest.json)

Atlas Best Practices

• Enable Atlas Search indexes for full-text search fields (job title, description)
• Use Atlas IP Access List — whitelist CI/CD runner IPs and dev machines only
• Enable Atlas Auditing for production clusters
• Use read/write users with least-privilege roles (not Atlas admin)
• Connection pooling is handled by Mongoose defaults — do not override unless profiling shows issues

Related Skills

• Backend Developer — controllers & routes
• Test Engineer — mongodb-memory-server usage
• AWS / Cloud Engineer — Atlas network access via AWS