 <p>There are two problems with your code as far as I can see:</p> <p>You seem not to not even connect to mongo. In order to connect to mongo using mongoose you have to use</p> <pre><code>mongoose.connect('mongodb://...'); </code></pre> <p>Also, your database.js is not valid javascript. It's not the connection string itself that's the problem, but rather that you don't assign in to a variable.</p> <p>A correct way would be to assign the connection string to a property like this:</p> <pre><code>module.exports = { connString: 'mongodb://username:password@ds033669.mongolab.com:33669/dclubdb' }; </code></pre> <p>and then you could connect with</p> <pre><code>mongoose.connect(configDB.connString); </code></pre>