Instead of a hard-coded JavaScript file to populate MongoDB, I use a Perl script to generate it from the same data files I use to run my blog. Now, I can update the data files and quickly push the changes to MongoDB.

At first, I tried to pipe the output of the script directly to MongoDB:

$ ./Books_mongo.pl | mongo book_reviews

But MongoDB kept complaining of unterminated string literal. So instead, I had to use a temporary file.

$ ./Books_mongo.pl > book_reviews.js
$ mongo book_reviews book_reviews.js

And it worked just fine.