MongoDB CRUD Operations

Release 2.6.7

MongoDB Documentation Project

January 13, 2015

Contents
1

MongoDB CRUD Introduction

1.1 Database Operations . . . . . . . . . .
Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Data Modification . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Related Features . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Replica Set Read Preference
Write Concern . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

3
3
3
5
5
5
6
6
6

MongoDB CRUD Concepts

2.1 Read Operations . . . . . . .
Read Operations Overview .
Cursors . . . . . . . . . . .
Query Optimization . . . . .
Query Plans . . . . . . . . .
Distributed Queries . . . . .
2.2 Write Operations . . . . . .
Write Operations Overview .
Write Concern . . . . . . . .
Atomicity and Transactions .
Distributed Write Operations
Write Operation Performance
Bulk Write Operations . . .
Storage . . . . . . . . . . .

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

6
6
7
10
11
13
15
19
20
23
28
28
33
34
36

MongoDB CRUD Tutorials

3.1 Insert Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Insert a Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Insert an Array of Documents . . . . . . . .
Insert Multiple Documents with Bulk . . .
Additional Examples and Methods . . . . .
3.2 Query Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Select All Documents in a Collection . . . .
Specify Equality Condition . . . . . . . . .
Specify Conditions Using Query Operators

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

38
38
39
39
40
42
42
42
42
42

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Specify AND Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Specify OR Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Specify AND as well as OR Conditions . . . . . . . . .
Embedded Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Modify Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Update Specific Fields in a Document . . . . . . . . .
Replace the Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
upsert Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Additional Examples and Methods . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 Remove Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Remove All Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Remove Documents that Match a Condition . . . . . .
Remove a Single Document that Matches a Condition .
3.5 Limit Fields to Return from a Query . . . . . . . . . .
Return All Fields in Matching Documents . . . . . . .
Return the Specified Fields and the _id Field Only . .
Return Specified Fields Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Return All But the Excluded Field . . . . . . . . . . .
Projection for Array Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.6 Limit Number of Elements in an Array after an Update
Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7 Iterate a Cursor in the mongo Shell . . . . . . . . . .
Manually Iterate the Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Iterator Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.8 Analyze Query Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Evaluate the Performance of a Query . . . . . . . . . .
Compare Performance of Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.9 Perform Two Phase Commits . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Recovering from Failure Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . .
Multiple Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Using Two-Phase Commits in Production Applications
3.10 Update Document if Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Modifications to the Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.11 Create Tailable Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
C++ Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.12 Create an Auto-Incrementing Sequence Field . . . . .
Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

43
43
43
43
44
48
49
50
50
52
52
52
52
53
53
53
53
53
54
54
54
54
54
55
55
56
57
57
58
59
59
60
60
63
65
66
66
66
66
66
67
67
67
68
69
69
70
70

MongoDB CRUD Reference

4.1 Query Cursor Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Query and Data Manipulation Collection Methods
4.3 MongoDB CRUD Reference Documentation . .
Write Concern Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

73
73
73
73
74

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

SQL to MongoDB Mapping Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The bios Example Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75
80

MongoDB provides rich semantics for reading and manipulating data. CRUD stands for create, read, update, and
delete. These terms are the foundation for all interactions with the database.
MongoDB CRUD Introduction (page 3) An introduction to the MongoDB data model as well as queries and data
manipulations.
MongoDB CRUD Concepts (page 6) The core documentation of query and data manipulation.
MongoDB CRUD Tutorials (page 38) Examples of basic query and data modification operations.
MongoDB CRUD Reference (page 73) Reference material for the query and data manipulation interfaces.

1 MongoDB CRUD Introduction

MongoDB stores data in the form of documents, which are JSON-like field and value pairs. Documents are
analogous to structures in programming languages that associate keys with values (e.g. dictionaries, hashes,
maps, and associative arrays). Formally, MongoDB documents are BSON documents. BSON is a binary representation of JSON with additional type information. In the documents, the value of a field can be any of
the BSON data types, including other documents, arrays, and arrays of documents. For more information, see
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/document.

MongoDB stores all documents in collections. A collection is a group of related documents that have a set of shared
common indexes. Collections are analogous to a table in relational databases.

1.1 Database Operations

Query
In MongoDB a query targets a specific collection of documents. Queries specify criteria, or conditions, that identify
the documents that MongoDB returns to the clients. A query may include a projection that specifies the fields from
the matching documents to return. You can optionally modify queries to impose limits, skips, and sort orders.
In the following diagram, the query process specifies a query criteria and a sort modifier:
See Read Operations Overview (page 7) for more information.

Data Modification
Data modification refers to operations that create, update, or delete data. In MongoDB, these operations modify the
data of a single collection. For the update and delete operations, you can specify the criteria to select the documents
to update or remove.
In the following diagram, the insert operation adds a new document to the users collection.

See Write Operations Overview (page 20) for more information.

1.2 Related Features

Indexes
To enhance the performance of common queries and updates, MongoDB has full support for secondary indexes. These
indexes allow applications to store a view of a portion of the collection in an efficient data structure. Most indexes
store an ordered representation of all values of a field or a group of fields. Indexes may also enforce uniqueness, store
objects in a geospatial representation, and facilitate text search.

Replica Set Read Preference

For replica sets and sharded clusters with replica set components, applications specify read preferences. A read
preference determines how the client direct read operations to the set.
Write Concern
Applications can also control the behavior of write operations using write concern (page 23). Particularly useful
for deployments with replica sets, the write concern semantics allow clients to specify the assurance that MongoDB
provides when reporting on the success of a write operation.
Aggregation
In addition to the basic queries, MongoDB provides several data aggregation features. For example, MongoDB can
return counts of the number of documents that match a query, or return the number of distinct values for a field, or
process a collection of documents using a versatile stage-based data processing pipeline or map-reduce operations.

2 MongoDB CRUD Concepts

The Read Operations (page 6) and Write Operations (page 19) documents introduce the behavior and operations of
read and write operations for MongoDB deployments.
Read Operations (page 6) Introduces all operations that select and return documents to clients, including the query
specifications.
Cursors (page 10) Queries return iterable objects, called cursors, that hold the full result set.
Query Optimization (page 11) Analyze and improve query performance.
Distributed Queries (page 15) Describes how sharded clusters and replica sets affect the performance of read
operations.
Write Operations (page 19) Introduces data create and modify operations, their behavior, and performances.
Write Concern (page 23) Describes the kind of guarantee MongoDB provides when reporting on the success
of a write operation.
Distributed Write Operations (page 28) Describes how MongoDB directs write operations on sharded clusters
and replica sets and the performance characteristics of these operations.
Continue reading from Write Operations (page 19) for additional background on the behavior of data modification operations in MongoDB.

2.1 Read Operations

The following documents describe read operations:
Read Operations Overview (page 7) A high level overview of queries and projections in MongoDB, including a discussion of syntax and behavior.
Cursors (page 10) Queries return iterable objects, called cursors, that hold the full result set.
Query Optimization (page 11) Analyze and improve query performance.
Query Plans (page 13) MongoDB executes queries using optimal plans.

Distributed Queries (page 15) Describes how sharded clusters and replica sets affect the performance of read operations.
Read Operations Overview
Read operations, or queries, retrieve data stored in the database. In MongoDB, queries select documents from a single
collection.
Queries specify criteria, or conditions, that identify the documents that MongoDB returns to the clients. A query may
include a projection that specifies the fields from the matching documents to return. The projection limits the amount
of data that MongoDB returns to the client over the network.
Query Interface

For query operations, MongoDB provides a db.collection.find() method. The method accepts both the
query criteria and projections and returns a cursor (page 10) to the matching documents. You can optionally modify
the query to impose limits, skips, and sort orders.
The following diagram highlights the components of a MongoDB query operation:

The next diagram shows the same query in SQL:

Example
db.users.find( { age: { $gt: 18 } }, { name: 1, address: 1 } ).limit(5)

This query selects the documents in the users collection that match the condition age is greater than 18. To specify
the greater than condition, query criteria uses the greater than (i.e. $gt) query selection operator. The query returns
at most 5 matching documents (or more precisely, a cursor to those documents). The matching documents will return
with only the _id, name and address fields. See Projections (page 8) for details.
See
SQL to MongoDB Mapping Chart (page 75) for additional examples of MongoDB queries and the corresponding SQL
statements.

Query Behavior

MongoDB queries exhibit the following behavior:

All queries in MongoDB address a single collection.
You can modify the query to impose limits, skips, and sort orders.
The order of documents returned by a query is not defined unless you specify a sort().
Operations that modify existing documents (page 48) (i.e. updates) use the same query syntax as queries to select
documents to update.
In aggregation pipeline, the $match pipeline stage provides access to MongoDB queries.
MongoDB provides a db.collection.findOne() method as a special case of find() that returns a single
document.
Query Statements

Consider the following diagram of the query process that specifies a query criteria and a sort modifier:

In the diagram, the query selects documents from the users collection. Using a query selection operator
to define the conditions for matching documents, the query selects documents that have age greater than (i.e. $gt)
18. Then the sort() modifier sorts the results by age in ascending order.
For additional examples of queries, see Query Documents (page 42).
Projections

Queries in MongoDB return all fields in all matching documents by default. To limit the amount of data that MongoDB
sends to applications, include a projection in the queries. By projecting results with a subset of fields, applications
reduce their network overhead and processing requirements.

Projections, which are the second argument to the find() method, may either specify a list of fields to return or list
fields to exclude in the result documents.
Important:
projections.

Except for excluding the _id field in inclusive projections, you cannot mix exclusive and inclusive

Consider the following diagram of the query process that specifies a query criteria and a projection:

In the diagram, the query selects from the users collection. The criteria matches the documents that have age equal
to 18. Then the projection specifies that only the name field should return in the matching documents.
Projection Examples
Exclude One Field From a Result Set
db.records.find( { "user_id": { $lt: 42 } }, { "history": 0 } )

This query selects documents in the records collection that match the condition { "user_id": { $lt: 42
} }, and uses the projection { "history": 0 } to exclude the history field from the documents in the result
set.
Return Two fields and the _id Field
db.records.find( { "user_id": { $lt: 42 } }, { "name": 1, "email": 1 } )

This query selects documents in the records collection that match the query { "user_id": { $lt: 42 }
} and uses the projection { "name": 1, "email": 1 } to return just the _id field (implicitly included),
name field, and the email field in the documents in the result set.

Return Two Fields and Exclude _id

db.records.find( { "user_id": { $lt: 42} }, { "_id": 0, "name": 1 , "email": 1 } )

This query selects documents in the records collection that match the query { "user_id":
}, and only returns the name and email fields in the documents in the result set.

{ $lt:

42}

See
Limit Fields to Return from a Query (page 53) for more examples of queries with projection statements.

Projection Behavior MongoDB projections have the following properties:

By default, the _id field is included in the results. To suppress the _id field from the result set, specify _id:
0 in the projection document.
For fields that contain arrays, MongoDB provides the following projection operators: $elemMatch, $slice,
and $.
For related projection functionality in the aggregation framework pipeline, use the $project pipeline
stage.
Cursors
In the mongo shell, the primary method for the read operation is the db.collection.find() method. This
method queries a collection and returns a cursor to the returning documents.
To access the documents, you need to iterate the cursor. However, in the mongo shell, if the returned cursor is not
assigned to a variable using the var keyword, then the cursor is automatically iterated up to 20 times 1 to print up to
the first 20 documents in the results.
For example, in the mongo shell, the following read operation queries the inventory collection for documents that
have type equal to food and automatically print up to the first 20 matching documents:
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );

To manually iterate the cursor to access the documents, see Iterate a Cursor in the mongo Shell (page 55).
Cursor Behaviors

Closure of Inactive Cursors By default, the server will automatically close the cursor after 10 minutes of inactivity
or if client has exhausted the cursor. To override this behavior, you can specify the noTimeout wire protocol flag2
in your query; however, you should either close the cursor manually or exhaust the cursor. In the mongo shell, you
can set the noTimeout flag:
var myCursor = db.inventory.find().addOption(DBQuery.Option.noTimeout);

See your driver documentation for information on setting the noTimeout flag. For the mongo shell, see
cursor.addOption() for a complete list of available cursor flags.
Cursor Isolation Because the cursor is not isolated during its lifetime, intervening write operations on a document
may result in a cursor that returns a document more than once if that document has changed. To handle this situation,
see the information on snapshot mode.
1 You can use the DBQuery.shellBatchSize to change the number of iteration from the default value 20. See mongo-shell-executingqueries for more information.
2 http://docs.mongodb.org/meta-driver/latest/legacy/mongodb-wire-protocol

10

Cursor Batches The MongoDB server returns the query results in batches. Batch size will not exceed the maximum
BSON document size. For most queries, the first batch returns 101 documents or just enough documents to exceed 1
megabyte. Subsequent batch size is 4 megabytes. To override the default size of the batch, see batchSize() and
limit().
For queries that include a sort operation without an index, the server must load all the documents in memory to perform
the sort and will return all documents in the first batch.
As you iterate through the cursor and reach the end of the returned batch, if there are more results, cursor.next()
will perform a getmore operation to retrieve the next batch. To see how many documents remain in the batch
as you iterate the cursor, you can use the objsLeftInBatch() method, as in the following example:
var myCursor = db.inventory.find();
var myFirstDocument = myCursor.hasNext() ? myCursor.next() : null;
myCursor.objsLeftInBatch();

Cursor Information

The db.serverStatus() method returns a document that includes a metrics field. The metrics field contains a cursor field with the following information:
number of timed out cursors since the last server restart
number of open cursors with the option DBQuery.Option.noTimeout set to prevent timeout after a period
of inactivity
number of pinned open cursors
total number of open cursors
Consider the following example which calls the db.serverStatus() method and accesses the metrics field
from the results and then the cursor field from the metrics field:
db.serverStatus().metrics.cursor

The result is the following document:

{
"timedOut" : <number>
"open" : {
"noTimeout" : <number>,
"pinned" : <number>,
"total" : <number>
}
}

See also:
db.serverStatus()
Query Optimization
Indexes improve the efficiency of read operations by reducing the amount of data that query operations need to process.
This simplifies the work associated with fulfilling queries within MongoDB.

11

Create an Index to Support Read Operations

If your application queries a collection on a particular field or set of fields, then an index on the queried field or fields
can prevent the query from scanning the whole collection to find and return the query results. For more information
about indexes, see the complete documentation of indexes in MongoDB.
Example
An application queries the inventory collection on the type field. The value of the type field is user-driven.
var typeValue = <someUserInput>;
db.inventory.find( { type: typeValue } );

To improve the performance of this query, add an ascending, or a descending, index to the inventory collection
on the type field. 3 In the mongo shell, you can create indexes using the db.collection.ensureIndex()
method:
db.inventory.ensureIndex( { type: 1 } )

This index can prevent the above query on type from scanning the whole collection to return the results.
To analyze the performance of the query with an index, see Analyze Query Performance (page 57).
In addition to optimizing read operations,
indexes can support sort operations and allow for a more efficient storage utilization.
See db.collection.ensureIndex() and
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/administration/indexes for more information about index creation.
Query Selectivity

Some query operations are not selective. These operations cannot use indexes effectively or cannot use indexes at all.
The inequality operators $nin and $ne are not very selective, as they often match a large portion of the index. As a
result, in most cases, a $nin or $ne query with an index may perform no better than a $nin or $ne query that must
scan all documents in a collection.
Queries that specify regular expressions, with inline JavaScript regular expressions or $regex operator expressions,
cannot use an index with one exception. Queries that specify regular expression with anchors at the beginning of a
string can use an index.
Covering a Query

An index covers (page 12) a query when both of the following apply:
all the fields in the query (page 42) are part of an index, and
all the fields returned in the results are in the same index.
For example, a collection inventory has the following index on the type and item fields:
db.inventory.ensureIndex( { type: 1, item: 1 } )

This index will cover the following operation which queries on the type and item fields and returns only the item
field:
3 For single-field indexes, the selection between ascending and descending order is immaterial. For compound indexes, the selection is important.
See indexing order for more details.

12

db.inventory.find(
{ type: "food", item:/^c/ },
{ item: 1, _id: 0 }
)

For the specified index to cover the query, the projection document must explicitly specify _id:
_id field from the result since the index does not include the _id field.

0 to exclude the

Performance Because the index contains all fields required by the query, MongoDB can both match the query
conditions (page 42) and return the results using only the index.
Querying only the index can be much faster than querying documents outside of the index. Index keys are typically
smaller than the documents they catalog, and indexes are typically available in RAM or located sequentially on disk.
Limitations An index cannot cover a query if:
the query is on a sharded collection and run against a mongos.
Changed in version 2.6.4: In earlier versions, an index cannot cover a query on a sharded collection when run
against either a mongos or the primary.
any of the indexed fields in any of the documents in the collection includes an array. If an indexed field is an
array, the index becomes a multi-key index index and cannot support a covered query.
any of the returned indexed fields are fields in subdocuments.
documents of the following form:

For example, consider a collection users with

{ _id: 1, user: { login: "tester" } }

The collection has the following index:

{ "user.login": 1 }

The { "user.login":

1 } index does not cover the following query:

db.users.find( { "user.login": "tester" }, { "user.login": 1, _id: 0 } )

However, the query can use the { "user.login":

1 } index to find matching documents.

indexOnly To determine whether a query is a covered query, use the explain() method. If the explain()
output displays true for the indexOnly field, an index covers the query, and MongoDB queries only that index to
match the query and return the results.
For more information see indexes-measuring-use.
Query Plans
The MongoDB query optimizer processes queries and chooses the most efficient query plan for a query given the
available indexes. The query system then uses this query plan each time the query runs.
The query optimizer only caches the plans for those query shapes that can have more than one viable plan.
The query optimizer occasionally reevaluates query plans as the content of the collection changes to ensure optimal
query plans. You can also specify which indexes the optimizer evaluates with Index Filters (page 15).
You can use the explain() method to view statistics about the query plan for a given query. This information can
help as you develop indexing strategies.
4

To index fields in subdocuments, use dot notation.

13

Query Optimization

To create a new query plan, the query optimizer:

1. runs the query against several candidate indexes in parallel.
2. records the matches in a common results buffer or buffers.
If the candidate plans include only ordered query plans, there is a single common results buffer.
If the candidate plans include only unordered query plans, there is a single common results buffer.
If the candidate plans include both ordered query plans and unordered query plans, there are two common
results buffers, one for the ordered plans and the other for the unordered plans.
If an index returns a result already returned by another index, the optimizer skips the duplicate match. In the
case of the two buffers, both buffers are de-duped.
3. stops the testing of candidate plans and selects an index when one of the following events occur:
An unordered query plan has returned all the matching results; or
An ordered query plan has returned all the matching results; or
An ordered query plan has returned a threshold number of matching results:
Version 2.0: Threshold is the query batch size. The default batch size is 101.
Version 2.2: Threshold is 101.
The selected index becomes the index specified in the query plan; future iterations of this query or queries with the
same query pattern will use this index. Query pattern refers to query select conditions that differ only in the values, as
in the following two queries with the same query pattern:
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } )
db.inventory.find( { type: 'utensil' } )

Query Plan Revision

As collections change over time, the query optimizer deletes the query plan and re-evaluates after any of the following
events:
The collection receives 1,000 write operations.
The reIndex rebuilds the index.
You add or drop an index.
The mongod process restarts.
You run a query with explain().
Cached Query Plan Interface

New in version 2.6.

MongoDB provides http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/method/js-plan-cache to
view and modify the cached query plans.

14

Index Filters

New in version 2.6.

Index filters determine which indexes the optimizer evaluates for a query shape. A query shape consists of a combination of query, sort, and projection specifications. If an index filter exists for a given query shape, the optimizer only
considers those indexes specified in the filter.
When an index filter exists for the query shape, MongoDB ignores the hint(). To see whether MongoDB applied
an index filter for a query, check the explain.filterSet field of the explain() output.
Index filters only affects which indexes the optimizer evaluates; the optimizer may still select the collection scan as
the winning plan for a given query shape.
Index filters exist for the duration of the server process and do not persist after shutdown. MongoDB also provides a
command to manually remove filters.
Because index filters overrides the expected behavior of the optimizer as well as the hint() method, use index filters
sparingly.
See planCacheListFilters, planCacheClearFilters, and planCacheSetFilter.
Distributed Queries
Read Operations to Sharded Clusters

Sharded clusters allow you to partition a data set among a cluster of mongod instances in a
way that is nearly transparent to the application.
For an overview of sharded clusters, see the
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/sharding section of this manual.
For a sharded cluster, applications issue operations to one of the mongos instances associated with the cluster.
Read operations on sharded clusters are most efficient when directed to a specific shard. Queries to sharded collections
should include the collections shard key. When a query includes a shard key, the mongos can use cluster metadata
from the config database to route the queries to shards.
If a query does not include the shard key, the mongos must direct the query to all shards in the cluster. These scatter
gather queries can be inefficient. On larger clusters, scatter gather queries are unfeasible for routine operations.

For more information on read operations in sharded clusters, see the http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/sharded-cl
and sharding-shard-key sections.
Read Operations to Replica Sets

Replica sets use read preferences to determine where and how to route read operations to members of the replica set.
By default, MongoDB always reads data from a replica sets primary. You can modify that behavior by changing the
read preference mode.
You can configure the read preference mode on a per-connection or per-operation basis to allow reads from secondaries
to:
reduce latency in multi-data-center deployments,
improve read throughput by distributing high read-volumes (relative to write volume),
for backup operations, and/or
to allow reads during failover situations.

15

16

17

18

Read operations from secondary members of replica sets are not guaranteed to reflect the current state of the primary,
and the state of secondaries will trail the primary by some amount of time. Often, applications dont rely on this kind
of strict consistency, but application developers should always consider the needs of their application before setting
read preference.
For
more
information
on
read
preference
or
on
the
read
preference
modes,
see
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/read-preference and replica-set-read-preference-modes.

2.2 Write Operations

The following documents describe write operations:
Write Operations Overview (page 20) Provides an overview of MongoDBs data insertion and modification operations, including aspects of the syntax, and behavior.
Write Concern (page 23) Describes the kind of guarantee MongoDB provides when reporting on the success of a
write operation.
Atomicity and Transactions (page 28) Describes write operation atomicity in MongoDB.
Distributed Write Operations (page 28) Describes how MongoDB directs write operations on sharded clusters and
replica sets and the performance characteristics of these operations.
Write Operation Performance (page 33) Introduces the performance constraints and factors for writing data to MongoDB deployments.
Bulk Write Operations (page 34) Provides an overview of MongoDBs bulk write operations.
Storage (page 36) Introduces the storage allocation strategies available for MongoDB collections.

19

Write Operations Overview

A write operation is any operation that creates or modifies data in the MongoDB instance. In MongoDB, write
operations target a single collection. All write operations in MongoDB are atomic on the level of a single document.
There are three classes of write operations in MongoDB: insert (page 20), update (page 21), and remove (page 22).
Insert operations add new data to a collection. Update operations modify existing data, and remove operations delete
data from a collection. No insert, update, or remove can affect more than one document atomically.
For the update and remove operations, you can specify criteria, or conditions, that identify the documents to update or
remove. These operations use the same query syntax to specify the criteria as read operations (page 6).
MongoDB allows applications to determine the acceptable level of acknowledgement required of write operations.
See Write Concern (page 23) for more information.
Insert

In MongoDB, the db.collection.insert() method adds new documents to a collection.

The following diagram highlights the components of a MongoDB insert operation:

The following diagram shows the same query in SQL:

Example
The following operation inserts a new document into the users collection. The new document has four fields name,
age, and status, and an _id field. MongoDB always adds the _id field to the new document if that field does not
exist.
db.users.insert(
{
name: "sue",

20

age: 26,
status: "A"
}
)

For more information and examples, see db.collection.insert().

Insert Behavior If you add a new document without the _id field, the client library or the mongod instance adds an
_id field and populates the field with a unique ObjectId.
If you specify the _id field, the value must be unique within the collection. For operations with write concern
(page 23), if you try to create a document with a duplicate _id value, mongod returns a duplicate key exception.
Other Methods to Add Documents You can also add new documents to a collection using methods that have an
upsert (page 22) option. If the option is set to true, these methods will either modify existing documents or add a
new document when no matching documents exist for the query. For more information, see Update Behavior with the
upsert Option (page 22).
Update

In MongoDB, the db.collection.update() method modifies existing documents in a collection. The

db.collection.update() method can accept query criteria to determine which documents to update as well as
an options document that affects its behavior, such as the multi option to update multiple documents.
Operations performed by an update are atomic within a single document. For example, you can safely use the $inc
and $mul operators to modify frequently-changed fields in concurrent applications.
The following diagram highlights the components of a MongoDB update operation:

The following diagram shows the same query in SQL:

Example

21

db.users.update(
{ age: { $gt: 18 } },
{ $set: { status: "A" } },
{ multi: true }
)

This update operation on the users collection sets the status field to A for the documents that match the criteria
of age greater than 18.
For more information, see db.collection.update() and update() Examples.
Default Update Behavior By default, the db.collection.update() method updates a single document.
However, with the multi option, update() can update all documents in a collection that match a query.
The db.collection.update() method either updates specific fields in the existing document or replaces the
document. See db.collection.update() for details as well as examples.
When performing update operations that increase the document size beyond the allocated space for that document, the
update operation relocates the document on disk.
MongoDB preserves the order of the document fields following write operations except for the following cases:
The _id field is always the first field in the document.
Updates that include renaming of field names may result in the reordering of fields in the document.
Changed in version 2.6: Starting in version 2.6, MongoDB actively attempts to preserve the field order in a document.
Before version 2.6, MongoDB did not actively preserve the order of the fields in a document.
Update Behavior with the upsert Option If the update() method includes upsert: true and no documents
match the query portion of the update operation, then the update operation creates a new document. If there are
matching documents, then the update operation with the upsert: true modifies the matching document or documents.
By specifying upsert: true, applications can indicate, in a single operation, that if no matching documents are found
for the update, an insert should be performed. See update() for details on performing an upsert.
Changed in version 2.6: In 2.6, the new Bulk() methods and the underlying update command allow you to perform
many updates with upsert: true operations in a single call.
If you create documents using the upsert option to update() consider using a a unique index to prevent duplicated
operations.
Remove

In MongoDB, the db.collection.remove() method deletes documents from a collection.

db.collection.remove() method accepts a query criteria to determine which documents to remove.
The following diagram highlights the components of a MongoDB remove operation:

22

The

The following diagram shows the same query in SQL:

Example
db.users.remove(
{ status: "D" }
)

This delete operation on the users collection removes all documents that match the criteria of status equal to D.
For more information, see db.collection.remove() method and Remove Documents (page 52).
Remove Behavior By default, db.collection.remove() method removes all documents that match its query.
However, the method can accept a flag to limit the delete operation to a single document.
Isolation of Write Operations

The modification of a single document is always atomic, even if the write operation modifies multiple embedded
documents within that document. No other operations are atomic.
If a write operation modifies multiple documents, the operation as a whole is not atomic, and other operations may interleave. You can, however, attempt to isolate a write operation that affects multiple documents using the isolation
operator.
For more information Atomicity and Transactions (page 28).
Additional Methods

The db.collection.save() method can either update an existing document or insert a document if the document cannot be found by the _id field. See db.collection.save() for more information and examples.
MongoDB also provides methods to perform write operations in bulk. See Bulk() for more information.
Write Concern
Write concern describes the guarantee that MongoDB provides when reporting on the success of a write operation.
The strength of the write concerns determine the level of guarantee. When inserts, updates and deletes have a weak
write concern, write operations return quickly. In some failure cases, write operations issued with weak write concerns
may not persist. With stronger write concerns, clients wait after sending a write operation for MongoDB to confirm
the write operations.
MongoDB provides different levels of write concern to better address the specific needs of applications. Clients
may adjust write concern to ensure that the most important operations persist successfully to an entire MongoDB
deployment. For other less critical operations, clients can adjust the write concern to ensure faster performance rather
than ensure persistence to the entire deployment.
Changed in version 2.6: A new protocol for write operations integrates write concern with the write operations.
23

For details on write concern configurations, see Write Concern Reference (page 74).
Considerations

Default Write Concern The mongo shell and the MongoDB drivers use Acknowledged (page 24) as the default
write concern.
See Acknowledged (page 24) for more information, including when this write concern became the default.
Read Isolation MongoDB allows clients to read documents inserted or modified before it commits these modifications to disk, regardless of write concern level or journaling configuration. As a result, applications may observe two
classes of behaviors:
For systems with multiple concurrent readers and writers, MongoDB will allow clients to read the results of a
write operation before the write operation returns.
If the mongod terminates before the journal commits, even if a write returns successfully, queries may have
read data that will not exist after the mongod restarts.
Other database systems refer to these isolation semantics as read uncommitted. For all inserts and updates, MongoDB modifies each document in isolation: clients never see documents in intermediate states. For multi-document
operations, MongoDB does not provide any multi-document transactions or isolation.
When mongod returns a successful journaled write concern, the data is fully committed to disk and will be available
after mongod restarts.
For replica sets, write operations are durable only after a write replicates and commits to the journal of a majority
of the voting members of the set. 5 MongoDB regularly commits data to the journal regardless of journaled write
concern: use the commitIntervalMs to control how often a mongod commits the journal.
Timeouts Clients can set a wtimeout (page 75) value as part of a replica acknowledged (page 25) write concern. If
the write concern is not satisfied in the specified interval, the operation returns an error, even if the write concern will
eventually succeed.
MongoDB does not rollback or undo modifications made before the wtimeout interval expired.
Write Concern Levels

MongoDB has the following levels of conceptual write concern, listed from weakest to strongest:
Unacknowledged With an unacknowledged write concern, MongoDB does not acknowledge the receipt of write
operations. Unacknowledged is similar to errors ignored; however, drivers will attempt to receive and handle network
errors when possible. The drivers ability to detect network errors depends on the systems networking configuration.
Before the releases outlined in driver-write-concern-change, this was the default write concern.
Acknowledged With a receipt acknowledged write concern, the mongod confirms that it received the write operation and applied the change to the in-memory view of data. Acknowledged write concern allows clients to catch
network, duplicate key, and other errors.
MongoDB uses the acknowledged write concern by default starting in the driver releases outlined in write-concernchange-releases.
5 For the purposes of write concern, w:majority refers to a majority of all the members in the set. As a result, arbiters, non-voting members,
passive members, hidden members and delayed members are all included in the definition of majority write concern.

24

Changed in version 2.6: The mongo shell write methods now incorporates the write concern (page 23) in the
write methods and provide the default write concern whether run interactively or in a script. See write-methodsincompatibility for details.
Acknowledged write concern does not confirm that the write operation has persisted to the disk system.
Journaled With a journaled write concern, the MongoDB acknowledges the write operation only after committing
the data to the journal. This write concern ensures that MongoDB can recover the data following a shutdown or power
interruption.
You must have journaling enabled to use this write concern.
With a journaled write concern, write operations must wait for the next journal commit. To reduce latency for these operations, MongoDB also increases the frequency that it commits operations to the journal. See commitIntervalMs
for more information.
Note: Requiring journaled write concern in a replica set only requires a journal commit of the write operation to the
primary of the set regardless of the level of replica acknowledged write concern.

Replica Acknowledged Replica sets present additional considerations with regards to write concern.. The default
write concern only requires acknowledgement from the primary.
With replica acknowledged write concern, you can guarantee that the write operation propagates to additional members
of the replica set. See Write Concern for Replica Sets for more information.
Note: Requiring journaled write concern in a replica set only requires a journal commit of the write operation to the
primary of the set regardless of the level of replica acknowledged write concern.
See also:
Write Concern Reference (page 74)

25

26

27

Atomicity and Transactions

In MongoDB, a write operation is atomic on the level of a single document, even if the operation modifies multiple
embedded documents within a single document.
When a single write operation modifies multiple documents, the modification of each document is atomic, but the
operation as a whole is not atomic and other operations may interleave. However, you can isolate a single write
operation that affects multiple documents using the $isolated operator.
$isolated Operator

Using the $isolated operator, a write operation that affect multiple documents can prevent other processes from
interleaving once the write operation modifies the first document. This ensures that no client sees the changes until the
write operation completes or errors out.
Isolated write operation does not provide all-or-nothing atomicity. That is, an error during the write operation does
not roll back all its changes that preceded the error.
The $isolated does not work on sharded clusters.
For an example of an update operation that uses the $isolated operator, see $isolated. For an example of a
remove operation that uses the $isolated operator, see isolate-remove-operations.
Transaction-Like Semantics

Since a single document can contain multiple embedded documents, single-document atomicity is sufficient for many
practical use cases. For cases where a sequence of write operations must operate as if in a single transaction, you can
implement a two-phase commit (page 59) in your application.
However, two-phase commits can only offer transaction-like semantics. Using two-phase commit ensures data consistency, but it is possible for applications to return intermediate data during the two-phase commit or rollback.
For more information on two-phase commit and rollback, see Perform Two Phase Commits (page 59).
Concurrency Control

Concurrency control allows multiple applications to run concurrently without causing data inconsistency or conflicts.
An approach may be to create a unique index on a field (or fields) that should have only unique values (or unique
combination of values) prevents duplicate insertions or updates that result in duplicate values. For examples of use
cases, see update() and Unique Index and findAndModify() and Unique Index.
Another approach is to specify the expected current value of a field in the query predicate for the write operations. For
an example, see Update if Current (page 66).
The two-phase commit pattern provides a variation where the query predicate includes the application identifier
(page 64) as well as the expected state of the data in the write operation.
Distributed Write Operations
Write Operations on Sharded Clusters

For sharded collections in a sharded cluster, the mongos directs write operations from applications to the shards that
are responsible for the specific portion of the data set. The mongos uses the cluster metadata from the config database
to route the write operation to the appropriate shards.
28

29

MongoDB partitions data in a sharded collection into ranges based on the values of the shard key. Then, MongoDB
distributes these chunks to shards. The shard key determines the distribution of chunks to shards. This can affect the
performance of write operations in the cluster.

Important: Update operations that affect a single document must include the shard key or the _id field. Updates
that affect multiple documents are more efficient in some situations if they have the shard key, but can be broadcast to
all shards.
If the value of the shard key increases or decreases with every insert, all insert operations target a single shard. As a
result, the capacity of a single shard becomes the limit for the insert capacity of the sharded cluster.
For more information, see http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/administration/sharded-clusters
and Bulk Write Operations (page 34).
Write Operations on Replica Sets

In replica sets, all write operations go to the sets primary, which applies the write operation then records the operations on the primarys operation log or oplog. The oplog is a reproducible sequence of operations to the data set.
Secondary members of the set are continuously replicating the oplog and applying the operations to themselves in an
asynchronous process.
Large volumes of write operations, particularly bulk operations, may create situations where the secondary members have difficulty applying the replicating operations from the primary at a sufficient rate: this can cause the secondarys state to fall behind that of the primary. Secondaries that are significantly behind the primary present problems for normal operation of the replica set, particularly failover in the form of rollbacks as well as general read
consistency.
To help avoid this issue, you can customize the write concern (page 23) to return confirmation of the write operation
to another member 6 of the replica set every 100 or 1,000 operations. This provides an opportunity for secondaries
to catch up with the primary. Write concern can slow the overall progress of write operations but ensure that the
secondaries can maintain a largely current state with respect to the primary.
For more information on replica sets and write operations, see Replica Acknowledged (page 25), replica-set-oplogsizing, and http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/change-oplog-size.
6 Intermittently issuing a write concern with a w value of 2 or majority will slow the throughput of write traffic; however, this practice will
allow the secondaries to remain current with the state of the primary.
Changed in version 2.6: In Master/Slave deployments, MongoDB treats w: "majority" as equivalent to w: 1. In earlier versions of
MongoDB, w: "majority" produces an error in master/slave deployments.

30

31

32

Write Operation Performance

Indexes

After every insert, update, or delete operation, MongoDB must update every index associated with the collection in
addition to the data itself. Therefore, every index on a collection adds some amount of overhead for the performance
of write operations. 7
In general, the performance gains that indexes provide for read operations are worth the insertion penalty. However,
in order to optimize write performance when possible, be careful when creating new indexes and evaluate the existing
indexes to ensure that your queries actually use these indexes.
For
indexes
and
queries,
see
Query
Optimization
(page
11).
For
more
formation
on
indexes,
see
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/indexes
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/applications/indexes.

inand

Document Growth

If an update operation causes a document to exceed the currently allocated record size, MongoDB relocates the document on disk with enough contiguous space to hold the document. These relocations take longer than in-place updates,
particularly if the collection has indexes. If a collection has indexes, MongoDB must update all index entries. Thus,
for a collection with many indexes, the move will impact the write throughput.
Some update operations, such as the $inc operation, do not cause an increase in document size. For these update
operations, MongoDB can apply the updates in-place. Other update operations, such as the $push operation, change
the size of the document.
In-place-updates are significantly more efficient than updates that cause document growth. When possible, use data
models that minimize the need for document growth.
See Storage (page 36) for more information.
Storage Performance

Hardware The capability of the storage system creates some important physical limits for the performance of MongoDBs write operations. Many unique factors related to the storage system of the drive affect write performance,
including random access patterns, disk caches, disk readahead and RAID configurations.
Solid state drives (SSDs) can outperform spinning hard disks (HDDs) by 100 times or more for random workloads.
See
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/administration/production-notes for recommendations
regarding additional hardware and configuration options.

Journaling MongoDB uses write ahead logging to an on-disk journal to guarantee write operation (page 19) durability and to provide crash resiliency. Before applying a change to the data files, MongoDB writes the change operation
to the journal.
While the durability assurance provided by the journal typically outweigh the performance costs of the additional write
operations, consider the following interactions between the journal and performance:
7 For inserts and updates to un-indexed fields, the overhead for sparse indexes is less than for non-sparse indexes. Also for non-sparse indexes,
updates that do not change the record size have less indexing overhead.

33

 if the journal and the data file reside on the same block device, the data files and the journal may have to contend
for a finite number of available write operations. Moving the journal to a separate device may increase the
capacity for write operations.
if applications specify write concern (page 23) that includes journaled (page 25), mongod will decrease the
duration between journal commits, which can increases the overall write load.
the duration between journal commits is configurable using the commitIntervalMs run-time option. Decreasing the period between journal commits will increase the number of write operations, which can limit
MongoDBs capacity for write operations. Increasing the amount of time between commits may decrease the
total number of write operation, but also increases the chance that the journal will not record a write operation
in the event of a failure.
For additional information on journaling, see http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/journaling.
Bulk Write Operations
Overview

MongoDB provides clients the ability to perform write operations in bulk. Bulk write operations affect a single
collection. MongoDB allows applications to determine the acceptable level of acknowledgement required for bulk
write operations.
New Bulk methods provide the ability to perform bulk insert, update, and remove operations. MongoDB also supports
bulk insert through passing an array of documents to the db.collection.insert() method.
Changed in version 2.6: Previous versions of MongoDB provided the ability for bulk inserts only. With previous
versions, clients could perform bulk inserts by passing an array of documents to the db.collection.insert()8 method. To
see the documentation for earlier versions, see Bulk Inserts9 .
Ordered vs Unordered Operations

Bulk write operations can be either ordered or unordered. With an ordered list of operations, MongoDB executes
the operations serially. If an error occurs during the processing of one of the write operations, MongoDB will return
without processing any remaining write operations in the list.
With an unordered list of operations, MongoDB can execute the operations in parallel. If an error occurs during the
processing of one of the write operations, MongoDB will continue to process remaining write operations in the list.
Executing an ordered list of operations on a sharded collection will generally be slower than executing an unordered
list since with an ordered list, each operation must wait for the previous operation to finish.
Bulk Methods

To use the Bulk() methods:

1. Initialize a list of operations using either db.collection.initializeUnorderedBulkOp() or
db.collection.initializeOrderedBulkOp().
2. Add write operations to the list using the following methods:
Bulk.insert()
Bulk.find()
8 http://docs.mongodb.org/v2.4/core/bulk-inserts
9 http://docs.mongodb.org/v2.4/core/bulk-inserts

34

 Bulk.find.upsert()
Bulk.find.update()
Bulk.find.updateOne()
Bulk.find.replaceOne()
Bulk.find.remove()
Bulk.find.removeOne()
3. To execute the list of operations, use the Bulk.execute() method. You can specify the write concern for
the list in the Bulk.execute() method.
Once executed, you cannot re-execute the list without reinitializing.
For example,
var bulk = db.items.initializeUnorderedBulkOp();
bulk.insert( { _id: 1, item: "abc123", status: "A", soldQty: 5000 } );
bulk.insert( { _id: 2, item: "abc456", status: "A", soldQty: 150 } );
bulk.insert( { _id: 3, item: "abc789", status: "P", soldQty: 0 } );
bulk.execute( { w: "majority", wtimeout: 5000 } );

For more examples, refer to the reference page for each http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/method/js-bul
method. For information and examples on performing bulk insert using the db.collection.insert(), see
db.collection.insert().
See also:
rel-notes-write-operations
Bulk Execution Mechanics

When executing an ordered list of operations, MongoDB groups adjacent operations by the operation type.
When executing an unordered list of operations, MongoDB groups and may also reorder the operations to increase
performance. As such, when performing unordered bulk operations, applications should not depend on the ordering.
Each group of operations can have at most 1000 operations. If a group exceeds this limit, MongoDB will
divide the group into smaller groups of 1000 or less. For example, if the bulk operations list consists of 2000 insert
operations, MongoDB creates 2 groups, each with 1000 operations.
The sizes and grouping mechanics are internal performance details and are subject to change in future versions.
To see how the operations are grouped for a bulk operation execution, call Bulk.getOperations() after the
execution.
For more information, see Bulk.execute().
Strategies for Bulk Inserts to a Sharded Collection

Large bulk insert operations, including initial data inserts or routine data import, can affect sharded cluster performance. For bulk inserts, consider the following strategies:
Pre-Split the Collection If the sharded collection is empty, then the collection has only one initial chunk, which
resides on a single shard. MongoDB must then take time to receive data, create splits, and distribute the split
chunks to the available shards. To avoid this performance cost, you can pre-split the collection, as described in
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/split-chunks-in-sharded-cluster.

35

Insert to Multiple mongos To parallelize import processes, send bulk insert or insert operations to
more than one mongos instance.
For empty collections, first pre-split the collection as described in
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/split-chunks-in-sharded-cluster.
Avoid Monotonic Throttling If your shard key increases monotonically during an insert, then all inserted data goes
to the last chunk in the collection, which will always end up on a single shard. Therefore, the insert capacity of the
cluster will never exceed the insert capacity of that single shard.
If your insert volume is larger than what a single shard can process, and if you cannot avoid a monotonically increasing
shard key, then consider the following modifications to your application:
Reverse the binary bits of the shard key. This preserves the information and avoids correlating insertion order
with increasing sequence of values.
Swap the first and last 16-bit words to shuffle the inserts.
Example
The following example, in C++, swaps the leading and trailing 16-bit word of BSON ObjectIds generated so they are
no longer monotonically increasing.
using namespace mongo;
OID make_an_id() {
OID x = OID::gen();
const unsigned char *p = x.getData();
swap( (unsigned short&) p[0], (unsigned short&) p[10] );
return x;
}
void foo() {
// create an object
BSONObj o = BSON( "_id" << make_an_id() << "x" << 3 << "name" << "jane" );
// now we may insert o into a sharded collection
}

See also:
sharding-shard-key for information on choosing a sharded key. Also see Shard Key Internals (in particular, shardinginternals-operations-and-reliability).
Storage
Data Model

MongoDB stores data in the form of BSON documents, which are rich mappings of keys, or field names, to values.
BSON supports a rich collection of types, and fields in BSON documents may hold arrays of values or embedded
documents. All documents in MongoDB must be less than 16MB, which is the BSON document size.
Every document in MongoDB is stored in a record which contains the document itself and extra space, or padding,
which allows the document to grow as the result of updates.
All records are contiguously located on disk, and when a document becomes larger than the allocated record, MongoDB must allocate a new record. New allocations require MongoDB to move a document and update all indexes that
refer to the document, which takes more time than in-place updates and leads to storage fragmentation.
All records are part of a collection, which is a logical grouping of documents in a MongoDB database. The documents
in a collection share a set of indexes, and typically these documents share common fields and structure.

36

In MongoDB the database construct is a group of related collections. Each database has a distinct set of data files and
can contain a large number of collections. Also, each database has one distinct write lock, that blocks operations to
the database during write operations. A single MongoDB deployment may have many databases.
Journal

In order to ensure that all modifications to a MongoDB data set are durably written to disk, MongoDB records all
modifications to a journal that it writes to disk more frequently than it writes the data files. The journal allows
MongoDB to successfully recover data from data files after a mongod instance exits without flushing all changes.
See http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/journaling for more information about the journal in
MongoDB.
Record Allocation Strategies

MongoDB supports multiple record allocation strategies that determine how mongod adds padding to a document
when creating a record. Because documents in MongoDB may grow after insertion and all records are contiguous on
disk, the padding can reduce the need to relocate documents on disk following updates. Relocations are less efficient
than in-place updates, and can lead to storage fragmentation. As a result, all padding strategies trade additional space
for increased efficiency and decreased fragmentation.
Different allocation strategies support different kinds of workloads: the power of 2 allocations (page 37) are more
efficient for insert/update/delete workloads; while exact fit allocations (page 37) is ideal for collections without update
and delete workloads.
Power of 2 Sized Allocations Changed in version 2.6: For all new collections, usePowerOf2Sizes
became the default allocation strategy.
To change the default allocation strategy, use the
newCollectionsUsePowerOf2Sizes parameter.
mongod uses an allocation strategy called usePowerOf2Sizes where each record has a size in bytes that is a
power of 2 (e.g. 32, 64, 128, 256, 512...16777216.) The smallest allocation for a document is 32 bytes. The power of
2 sizes allocation strategy has two key properties:
there are a limited number of record allocation sizes, which makes it easier for mongod to reuse existing
allocations, which will reduce fragmentation in some cases.
in many cases, the record allocations are significantly larger than the documents they hold. This allows documents to grow while minimizing or eliminating the chance that the mongod will need to allocate a new record
if the document grows.
The usePowerOf2Sizes strategy does not eliminate document reallocation as a result of document growth, but it
minimizes its occurrence in many common operations.
Exact Fit Allocation The exact fit allocation strategy allocates record sizes based on the size of the document and
an additional padding factor. Each collection has its own padding factor, which defaults to 1 when you insert the first
document in a collection. MongoDB dynamically adjusts the padding factor up to 2 depending on the rate of growth
of the documents over the life of the collection.
To estimate total record size, compute the product of the padding factor and the size of the document. That is:
record size = paddingFactor * <document size>

The size of each record in a collection reflects the size of the padding factor at the time of allocation. See the
paddingFactor field in the output of db.collection.stats() to see the current padding factor for a collection.
37

On average, this exact fit allocation strategy uses less storage space than the usePowerOf2Sizes strategy but will
result in higher levels of storage fragmentation if documents grow beyond the size of their initial allocation.
The compact and repairDatabase operations remove padding by default, as do the mongodump and
mongorestore. compact does allow you to specify a padding for records during compaction.
Capped Collections

Capped collections are fixed-size collections that support high-throughput operations that store records in insertion
order. Capped collections work like circular buffers: once a collection fills its allocated space, it makes room for new
documents by overwriting the oldest documents in the collection.
See http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/capped-collections for more information.

3 MongoDB CRUD Tutorials

The following tutorials provide instructions for querying and modifying data. For a higher-level overview of these
operations, see MongoDB CRUD Operations (page 3).
Insert Documents (page 38) Insert new documents into a collection.
Query Documents (page 42) Find documents in a collection using search criteria.
Modify Documents (page 48) Modify documents in a collection
Remove Documents (page 52) Remove documents from a collection.
Limit Fields to Return from a Query (page 53) Limit which fields are returned by a query.
Limit Number of Elements in an Array after an Update (page 54) Use $push with modifiers to sort and maintain
an array of fixed size.
Iterate a Cursor in the mongo Shell (page 55) Access documents returned by a find query by iterating the cursor,
either manually or using the iterator index.
Analyze Query Performance (page 57) Use query introspection (i.e. explain) to analyze the efficiency of queries
and determine how a query uses available indexes.
Perform Two Phase Commits (page 59) Use two-phase commits when writing data to multiple documents.
Update Document if Current (page 66) Update a document only if it has not changed since it was last read.
Create Tailable Cursor (page 67) Create tailable cursors for use in capped collections with high numbers of write
operations for which an index would be too expensive.
Create an Auto-Incrementing Sequence Field (page 69) Describes how to create an incrementing sequence number
for the _id field using a Counters Collection or an Optimistic Loop.

3.1 Insert Documents

In MongoDB, the db.collection.insert() method adds new documents into a collection.

38

Insert a Document
Step 1: Insert a document into a collection.

Insert a document into a collection named inventory. The operation will create the collection if the collection does
not currently exist.
db.inventory.insert(
{
item: "ABC1",
details: {
model: "14Q3",
manufacturer: "XYZ Company"
},
stock: [ { size: "S", qty: 25 }, { size: "M", qty: 50 } ],
category: "clothing"
}
)

The operation returns a WriteResult object with the status of the operation. A successful insert of the document
returns the following object:
WriteResult({ "nInserted" : 1 })

The nInserted field specifies the number of documents inserted. If the operation encounters an error, the
WriteResult object will contain the error information.
Step 2: Review the inserted document.

If the insert operation is successful, verify the insertion by querying the collection.
db.inventory.find()

The document you inserted should return.

{ "_id" : ObjectId("53d98f133bb604791249ca99"), "item" : "ABC1", "details" : { "model" : "14Q3", "man

The returned document shows that MongoDB added an _id field to the document. If a client inserts a document that
does not contain the _id field, MongoDB adds the field with the value set to a generated ObjectId10 . The ObjectId11
values in your documents will differ from the ones shown.
Insert an Array of Documents
You can pass an array of documents to the db.collection.insert() method to insert multiple documents.
Step 1: Create an array of documents.

Define a variable mydocuments that holds an array of documents to insert.

var mydocuments =
[
{
10 http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/object-id
11 http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/object-id

39

item: "ABC2",
details: { model: "14Q3", manufacturer: "M1 Corporation" },
stock: [ { size: "M", qty: 50 } ],
category: "clothing"
},
{
item: "MNO2",
details: { model: "14Q3", manufacturer: "ABC Company" },
stock: [ { size: "S", qty: 5 }, { size: "M", qty: 5 }, { size: "L", qty: 1 } ],
category: "clothing"
},
{
item: "IJK2",
details: { model: "14Q2", manufacturer: "M5 Corporation" },
stock: [ { size: "S", qty: 5 }, { size: "L", qty: 1 } ],
category: "houseware"
}
];

Step 2: Insert the documents.

Pass the mydocuments array to the db.collection.insert() to perform a bulk insert.

db.inventory.insert( mydocuments );

The method returns a BulkWriteResult object with the status of the operation. A successful insert of the documents returns the following object:
BulkWriteResult({
"writeErrors" : [ ],
"writeConcernErrors" : [ ],
"nInserted" : 3,
"nUpserted" : 0,
"nMatched" : 0,
"nModified" : 0,
"nRemoved" : 0,
"upserted" : [ ]
})

The nInserted field specifies the number of documents inserted. If the operation encounters an error, the
BulkWriteResult object will contain information regarding the error.
The inserted documents will each have an _id field added by MongoDB.
Insert Multiple Documents with Bulk
New in version 2.6.
MongoDB provides a Bulk() API that you can use to perform multiple write operations in bulk. The following
sequence of operations describes how you would use the Bulk() API to insert a group of documents into a MongoDB
collection.
Step 1: Initialize a Bulk operations builder.

Initialize a Bulk operations builder for the collection inventory.

40

var bulk = db.inventory.initializeUnorderedBulkOp();

The operation returns an unordered operations builder which maintains a list of operations to perform. Unordered
operations means that MongoDB can execute in parallel as well as in nondeterministic order. If an error occurs during
the processing of one of the write operations, MongoDB will continue to process remaining write operations in the
list.
You can also initialize an ordered operations builder; see db.collection.initializeOrderedBulkOp()
for details.
Step 2: Add insert operations to the bulk object.

Add two insert operations to the bulk object using the Bulk.insert() method.
bulk.insert(
{
item: "BE10",
details: { model: "14Q2", manufacturer: "XYZ Company" },
stock: [ { size: "L", qty: 5 } ],
category: "clothing"
}
);
bulk.insert(
{
item: "ZYT1",
details: { model: "14Q1", manufacturer: "ABC Company" },
stock: [ { size: "S", qty: 5 }, { size: "M", qty: 5 } ],
category: "houseware"
}
);

Step 3: Execute the bulk operation.

Call the execute() method on the bulk object to execute the operations in its list.
bulk.execute();

The method returns a BulkWriteResult object with the status of the operation. A successful insert of the documents returns the following object:
BulkWriteResult({
"writeErrors" : [ ],
"writeConcernErrors" : [ ],
"nInserted" : 2,
"nUpserted" : 0,
"nMatched" : 0,
"nModified" : 0,
"nRemoved" : 0,
"upserted" : [ ]
})

The nInserted field specifies the number of documents inserted. If the operation encounters an error, the
BulkWriteResult object will contain information regarding the error.

41

Additional Examples and Methods

For more examples, see db.collection.insert().
The db.collection.update() method, the db.collection.findAndModify(), and the
db.collection.save() method can also add new documents. See the individual reference pages for the
methods for more information and examples.

3.2 Query Documents

In MongoDB, the db.collection.find() method retrieves documents from a collection.
db.collection.find() method returns a cursor (page 10) to the retrieved documents.

12

The

This tutorial provides examples of read operations using the db.collection.find() method in the mongo
shell. In these examples, the retrieved documents contain all their fields. To restrict the fields to return in the retrieved
documents, see Limit Fields to Return from a Query (page 53).
Select All Documents in a Collection
An empty query document ({}) selects all documents in the collection:
db.inventory.find( {} )

Not specifying a query document to the find() is equivalent to specifying an empty query document. Therefore the
following operation is equivalent to the previous operation:
db.inventory.find()

Specify Equality Condition

To specify equality condition, use the query document { <field>:
contain the <field> with the specified <value>.

<value> } to select all documents that

The following example retrieves from the inventory collection all documents where the type field has the value
snacks:
db.inventory.find( { type: "snacks" } )

Specify Conditions Using Query Operators

A query document can use the query operators to specify conditions in a MongoDB query.
The following example selects all documents in the inventory collection where the value of the type field is either
food or snacks:
db.inventory.find( { type: { $in: [ 'food', 'snacks' ] } } )

Although you can express this query using the $or operator, use the $in operator rather than the $or operator when
performing equality checks on the same field.
Refer to the http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/operator/query document for the complete list of query operators.
12 The db.collection.findOne() method also performs a read operation to return a single document.
db.collection.findOne() method is the db.collection.find() method with a limit of 1.

42

Internally, the

Specify AND Conditions

A compound query can specify conditions for more than one field in the collections documents. Implicitly, a logical
AND conjunction connects the clauses of a compound query so that the query selects the documents in the collection
that match all the conditions.
In the following example, the query document specifies an equality match on the field type and a less than ($lt)
comparison match on the field price:
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food', price: { $lt: 9.95 } } )

This query selects all documents where the type field has the value food and the value of the price field is less
than 9.95. See comparison operators for other comparison operators.
Specify OR Conditions
Using the $or operator, you can specify a compound query that joins each clause with a logical OR conjunction so
that the query selects the documents in the collection that match at least one condition.
In the following example, the query document selects all documents in the collection where the field qty has a value
greater than ($gt) 100 or the value of the price field is less than ($lt) 9.95:
db.inventory.find(
{
$or: [ { qty: { $gt: 100 } }, { price: { $lt: 9.95 } } ]
}
)

Specify AND as well as OR Conditions

With additional clauses, you can specify precise conditions for matching documents.
In the following example, the compound query document selects all documents in the collection where the value of
the type field is food and either the qty has a value greater than ($gt) 100 or the value of the price field is
less than ($lt) 9.95:
db.inventory.find(
{
type: 'food',
$or: [ { qty: { $gt: 100 } }, { price: { $lt: 9.95 } } ]
}
)

Embedded Documents
When the field holds an embedded document, a query can either specify an exact match on the embedded document
or specify a match by individual fields in the embedded document using the dot notation.
Exact Match on the Embedded Document

To specify an equality match on the whole embedded document, use the query document { <field>: <value>
} where <value> is the document to match. Equality matches on an embedded document require an exact match of
the specified <value>, including the field order.

43

In the following example, the query matches all documents where the value of the field producer is an embedded
document that contains only the field company with the value ABC123 and the field address with the value
123 Street, in the exact order:
db.inventory.find(
{
producer:
{
company: 'ABC123',
address: '123 Street'
}
}
)

Equality Match on Fields within an Embedded Document

Use the dot notation to match by specific fields in an embedded document. Equality matches for specific fields in
an embedded document will select documents in the collection where the embedded document contains the specified
fields with the specified values. The embedded document can contain additional fields.
In the following example, the query uses the dot notation to match all documents where the value of the field
producer is an embedded document that contains a field company with the value ABC123 and may contain
other fields:
db.inventory.find( { 'producer.company': 'ABC123' } )

Arrays
When the field holds an array, you can query for an exact array match or for specific values in the array. If the array
holds embedded documents, you can query for specific fields in the embedded documents using dot notation.
If you specify multiple conditions using the $elemMatch operator, the array must contain at least one element that
satisfies all the conditions. See Single Element Satisfies the Criteria (page 45).
If you specify multiple conditions without using the $elemMatch operator, then some combination of the array
elements, not necessarily a single element, must satisfy all the conditions; i.e. different elements in the array can
satisfy different parts of the conditions. See Combination of Elements Satisfies the Criteria (page 45).
Consider an inventory collection that contains the following documents:
{ _id: 5, type: "food", item: "aaa", ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ] }
{ _id: 6, type: "food", item: "bbb", ratings: [ 5, 9 ] }
{ _id: 7, type: "food", item: "ccc", ratings: [ 9, 5, 8 ] }

Exact Match on an Array

To specify equality match on an array, use the query document { <field>: <value> } where <value> is
the array to match. Equality matches on the array require that the array field match exactly the specified <value>,
including the element order.
The following example queries for all documents where the field ratings is an array that holds exactly three elements, 5, 8, and 9, in this order:
db.inventory.find( { ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ] } )

44

The operation returns the following document:

{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }

Match an Array Element

Equality matches can specify a single element in the array to match. These specifications match if the array contains
at least one element with the specified value.
The following example queries for all documents where ratings is an array that contains 5 as one of its elements:
db.inventory.find( { ratings: 5 } )

The operation returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 6, "type" : "food", "item" : "bbb", "ratings" : [ 5, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 7, "type" : "food", "item" : "ccc", "ratings" : [ 9, 5, 8 ] }

Match a Specific Element of an Array

Equality matches can specify equality matches for an element at a particular index or position of the array using the
dot notation.
In the following example, the query uses the dot notation to match all documents where the ratings array contains
5 as the first element:
db.inventory.find( { 'ratings.0': 5 } )

The operation returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 6, "type" : "food", "item" : "bbb", "ratings" : [ 5, 9 ] }

Specify Multiple Criteria for Array Elements

Single Element Satisfies the Criteria Use $elemMatch operator to specify multiple criteria on the elements of
an array such that at least one array element satisfies all the specified criteria.
The following example queries for documents where the ratings array contains at least one element that is greater
than ($gt) 5 and less than ($lt) 9:
db.inventory.find( { ratings: { $elemMatch: { $gt: 5, $lt: 9 } } } )

The operation returns the following documents, whose ratings array contains the element 8 which meets the criteria:
{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 7, "type" : "food", "item" : "ccc", "ratings" : [ 9, 5, 8 ] }

Combination of Elements Satisfies the Criteria The following example queries for documents where the
ratings array contains elements that in some combination satisfy the query conditions; e.g., one element can satisfy
the greater than 5 condition and another element can satisfy the less than 9 condition, or a single element can satisfy
both:

45

db.inventory.find( { ratings: { $gt: 5, $lt: 9 } } )

The operation returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 6, "type" : "food", "item" : "bbb", "ratings" : [ 5, 9 ] }
{ "_id" : 7, "type" : "food", "item" : "ccc", "ratings" : [ 9, 5, 8 ] }

The document with the "ratings" : [ 5, 9 ] matches the query since the element 9 is greater than 5 (the
first condition) and the element 5 is less than 9 (the second condition).
Array of Embedded Documents

Consider that the inventory collection includes the following documents:

{
_id: 100,
type: "food",
item: "xyz",
qty: 25,
price: 2.5,
ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "shipping" }, { memo: "approved", by: "billing" } ]
}
{
_id: 101,
type: "fruit",
item: "jkl",
qty: 10,
price: 4.25,
ratings: [ 5, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "payment" }, { memo: "delayed", by: "shipping" } ]
}

Match a Field in the Embedded Document Using the Array Index If you know the array index of the embedded
document, you can specify the document using the subdocuments position using the dot notation.
The following example selects all documents where the memos contains an array whose first element (i.e. index is 0)
is a document that contains the field by whose value is shipping:
db.inventory.find( { 'memos.0.by': 'shipping' } )

The operation returns the following document:

{
_id: 100,
type: "food",
item: "xyz",
qty: 25,
price: 2.5,
ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "shipping" }, { memo: "approved", by: "billing" } ]
}

46

Match a Field Without Specifying Array Index If you do not know the index position of the document in the array,
concatenate the name of the field that contains the array, with a dot (.) and the name of the field in the subdocument.
The following example selects all documents where the memos field contains an array that contains at least one
embedded document that contains the field by with the value shipping:
db.inventory.find( { 'memos.by': 'shipping' } )

The operation returns the following documents:

{
_id: 100,
type: "food",
item: "xyz",
qty: 25,
price: 2.5,
ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "shipping" }, { memo: "approved", by: "billing" } ]
}
{
_id: 101,
type: "fruit",
item: "jkl",
qty: 10,
price: 4.25,
ratings: [ 5, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "payment" }, { memo: "delayed", by: "shipping" } ]
}

Specify Multiple Criteria for Array of Documents

Single Element Satisfies the Criteria Use $elemMatch operator to specify multiple criteria on an array of embedded documents such that at least one embedded document satisfies all the specified criteria.
The following example queries for documents where the memos array has at least one embedded document that
contains both the field memo equal to on time and the field by equal to shipping:
db.inventory.find(
{
memos:
{
$elemMatch:
{
memo: 'on time',
by: 'shipping'
}
}
}
)

The operation returns the following document:

{
_id: 100,
type: "food",
item: "xyz",
qty: 25,
price: 2.5,

47

ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "shipping" }, { memo: "approved", by: "billing" } ]
}

Combination of Elements Satisfies the Criteria The following example queries for documents where the memos
array contains elements that in some combination satisfy the query conditions; e.g. one element satisfies the field
memo equal to on time condition and another element satisfies the field by equal to shipping condition, or
a single element can satisfy both criteria:
db.inventory.find(
{
'memos.memo': 'on time',
'memos.by': 'shipping'
}
)

The query returns the following documents:

{
_id: 100,
type: "food",
item: "xyz",
qty: 25,
price: 2.5,
ratings: [ 5, 8, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "shipping" }, { memo: "approved", by: "billing" } ]
}
{
_id: 101,
type: "fruit",
item: "jkl",
qty: 10,
price: 4.25,
ratings: [ 5, 9 ],
memos: [ { memo: "on time", by: "payment" }, { memo: "delayed", by: "shipping" } ]
}

3.3 Modify Documents

MongoDB provides the update() method to update the documents of a collection. The method accepts as its
parameters:
an update conditions document to match the documents to update,
an update operations document to specify the modification to perform, and
an options document.
To specify the update condition, use the same structure and syntax as the query conditions.
By default, update() updates a single document. To update multiple documents, use the multi option.

48

Update Specific Fields in a Document

To change a field value, MongoDB provides update operators13 , such as $set to modify values.
Some update operators, such as $set, will create the field if the field does not exist. See the individual update
operator14 reference.
Step 1: Use update operators to change field values.

For the document with item equal to "MNO2", use the $set operator to update the category field and the
details field to the specified values and the $currentDate operator to update the field lastModified with
the current date.
db.inventory.update(
{ item: "MNO2" },
{
$set: {
category: "apparel",
details: { model: "14Q3", manufacturer: "XYZ Company" }
},
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation. A successful update
of the document returns the following object:
WriteResult({ "nMatched" : 1, "nUpserted" : 0, "nModified" : 1 })

The nMatched field specifies the number of existing documents matched for the update, and nModified specifies
the number of existing documents modified.
Step 2: Update an embedded field.

To update a field within an embedded document, use the dot notation. When using the dot notation, enclose the whole
dotted field name in quotes.
The following updates the model field within the embedded details document.
db.inventory.update(
{ item: "ABC1" },
{ $set: { "details.model": "14Q2" } }
)

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation. A successful update
of the document returns the following object:
WriteResult({ "nMatched" : 1, "nUpserted" : 0, "nModified" : 1 })

Step 3: Update multiple documents.

By default, the update() method updates a single document. To update multiple documents, use the multi option
in the update() method.
13 http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/operator/update
14 http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/operator/update

49

Update the category field to "apparel" and update the lastModified field to the current date for all documents that have category field equal to "clothing".
db.inventory.update(
{ category: "clothing" },
{
$set: { category: "apparel" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
},
{ multi: true }
)

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation. A successful update
of the document returns the following object:
WriteResult({ "nMatched" : 3, "nUpserted" : 0, "nModified" : 3 })

Replace the Document

To replace the entire content of a document except for the _id field, pass an entirely new document as the second
argument to update().
The replacement document can have different fields from the original document. In the replacement document, you
can omit the _id field since the _id field is immutable. If you do include the _id field, it must be the same value as
the existing value.
Step 1: Replace a document.

The following operation replaces the document with item equal to "BE10". The newly replaced document will only
contain the the _id field and the fields in the replacement document.
db.inventory.update(
{ item: "BE10" },
{
item: "BE05",
stock: [ { size: "S", qty: 20 }, { size: "M", qty: 5 } ],
category: "apparel"
}
)

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation. A successful update
of the document returns the following object:
WriteResult({ "nMatched" : 1, "nUpserted" : 0, "nModified" : 1 })

upsert Option
By default, if no document matches the update query, the update() method does nothing.
However, by specifying upsert: true, the update() method either updates matching document or documents, or
inserts a new document using the update specification if no matching document exists.

50

Step 1: Specify upsert:

true for the update replacement operation.

When you specify upsert: true for an update operation to replace a document and no matching documents
are found, MongoDB creates a new document using the equality conditions in the update conditions document, and
replaces this document, except for the _id field if specified, with the update document.
The following operation either updates a matching document by replacing it with a new document or adds a new
document if no matching document exists.
db.inventory.update(
{ item: "TBD1" },
{
item: "TBD1",
details: { "model" : "14Q4", "manufacturer" : "ABC Company" },
stock: [ { "size" : "S", "qty" : 25 } ],
category: "houseware"
},
{ upsert: true }
)

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation, including whether
the db.collection.update() method modified an existing document or added a new document.
WriteResult({
"nMatched" : 0,
"nUpserted" : 1,
"nModified" : 0,
"_id" : ObjectId("53dbd684babeaec6342ed6c7")
})

The nMatched field shows that the operation matched 0 documents.

The nUpserted of 1 shows that the update added a document.
The nModified of 0 specifies that no existing documents were updated.
The _id field shows the generated _id field for the added document.
Step 2: Specify an upsert:

true for the update specific fields operation.

When you specify an upsert: true for an update operation that modifies specific fields and no matching documents are found, MongoDB creates a new document using the equality conditions in the update conditions document,
and applies the modification as specified in the update document.
The following update operation either updates specific fields of a matching document or adds a new document if no
matching document exists.
db.inventory.update(
{ item: "TBD2" },
{
$set: {
details: { "model" : "14Q3", "manufacturer" : "IJK Co." },
category: "houseware"
}
},
{ upsert: true }
)

51

The update operation returns a WriteResult object which contains the status of the operation, including whether
the db.collection.update() method modified an existing document or added a new document.
WriteResult({
"nMatched" : 0,
"nUpserted" : 1,
"nModified" : 0,
"_id" : ObjectId("53dbd7c8babeaec6342ed6c8")
})

The nMatched field shows that the operation matched 0 documents.

The nUpserted of 1 shows that the update added a document.
The nModified of 0 specifies that no existing documents were updated.
The _id field shows the generated _id field for the added document.
Additional Examples and Methods
For more examples, see Update examples in the db.collection.update() reference page.
The db.collection.findAndModify() and the db.collection.save() method can also modify existing documents or insert a new one. See the individual reference pages for the methods for more information and
examples.

3.4 Remove Documents

In MongoDB, the db.collection.remove() method removes documents from a collection. You can remove
all documents from a collection, remove all documents that match a condition, or limit the operation to remove just a
single document.
This tutorial provides examples of remove operations using the db.collection.remove() method in the mongo
shell.
Remove All Documents
To remove all documents from a collection, pass an empty query document {} to the remove() method. The
remove() method does not remove the indexes.
The following example removes all documents from the inventory collection:
db.inventory.remove({})

To remove all documents from a collection, it may be more efficient to use the drop() method to drop the entire
collection, including the indexes, and then recreate the collection and rebuild the indexes.
Remove Documents that Match a Condition
To remove the documents that match a deletion criteria, call the remove() method with the <query> parameter.
The following example removes all documents from the inventory collection where the type field equals food:
db.inventory.remove( { type : "food" } )

For large deletion operations, it may be more efficient to copy the documents that you want to keep to a new collection
and then use drop() on the original collection.
52

Remove a Single Document that Matches a Condition

To remove a single document, call the remove() method with the justOne parameter set to true or 1.
The following example removes one document from the inventory collection where the type field equals food:
db.inventory.remove( { type : "food" }, 1 )

To delete a single document sorted by some specified order, use the findAndModify() method.

3.5 Limit Fields to Return from a Query

The projection document limits the fields to return for all matching documents. The projection document can specify
the inclusion of fields or the exclusion of fields.
The specifications have the following forms:
Syntax
<field>:
<field>:

<1 or true>
<0 or false>

Description
Specify the inclusion of a field.
Specify the suppression of the field.

Important: The _id field is, by default, included in the result set. To suppress the _id field from the result set,
specify _id: 0 in the projection document.
You cannot combine inclusion and exclusion semantics in a single projection with the exception of the _id field.
This tutorial offers various query examples that limit the fields to return for all matching documents. The examples in
this tutorial use a collection inventory and use the db.collection.find() method in the mongo shell. The
db.collection.find() method returns a cursor (page 10) to the retrieved documents. For examples on query
selection criteria, see Query Documents (page 42).
Return All Fields in Matching Documents
If you specify no projection, the find() method returns all fields of all documents that match the query.
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } )

This operation will return all documents in the inventory collection where the value of the type field is food.
The returned documents contain all its fields.
Return the Specified Fields and the _id Field Only
A projection can explicitly include several fields. In the following operation, find() method returns all documents
that match the query. In the result set, only the item and qty fields and, by default, the _id field return in the
matching documents.
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' }, { item: 1, qty: 1 } )

Return Specified Fields Only

You can remove the _id field from the results by specifying its exclusion in the projection, as in the following
example:
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' }, { item: 1, qty: 1, _id:0 } )

53

This operation returns all documents that match the query. In the result set, only the item and qty fields return in
the matching documents.
Return All But the Excluded Field
To exclude a single field or group of fields you can use a projection in the following form:
db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' }, { type:0 } )

This operation returns all documents where the value of the type field is food. In the result set, the type field does
not return in the matching documents.
With the exception of the _id field you cannot combine inclusion and exclusion statements in projection documents.
Projection for Array Fields
For fields that contain arrays, MongoDB provides the following projection operators: $elemMatch, $slice, and
$.
For example, the inventory collection contains the following document:
{ "_id" : 5, "type" : "food", "item" : "aaa", "ratings" : [ 5, 8, 9 ] }

Then the following operation uses the $slice projection operator to return just the first two elements in the ratings
array.
db.inventory.find( { _id: 5 }, { ratings: { $slice: 2 } } )

$elemMatch, $slice, and $ are the only way to project portions of an array. For instance, you cannot project a
portion of an array using the array index; e.g. { "ratings.0": 1 } projection will not project the array with
the first element.

3.6 Limit Number of Elements in an Array after an Update

New in version 2.4.
Synopsis
Consider an application where users may submit many scores (e.g. for a test), but the application only needs to track
the top three test scores.
This pattern uses the $push operator with the $each, $sort, and $slice modifiers to sort and maintain an array
of fixed size.
Pattern
Consider the following document in the collection students:
{
_id: 1,
scores: [
{ attempt: 1, score: 10 },
{ attempt: 2 , score:8 }
]
}

54

The following update uses the $push operator with:

the $each modifier to append to the array 2 new elements,
the $sort modifier to order the elements by ascending (1) score, and
the $slice modifier to keep the last 3 elements of the ordered array.
db.students.update(
{ _id: 1 },
{
$push: {
scores: {
$each: [ { attempt: 3, score: 7 }, { attempt: 4, score: 4 } ],
$sort: { score: 1 },
$slice: -3
}
}
}
)

Note: When using the $sort modifier on the array element, access the field in the subdocument element directly
instead of using the dot notation on the array field.
After the operation, the document contains only the top 3 scores in the scores array:
{
"_id" : 1,
"scores" : [
{ "attempt" : 3, "score" : 7 },
{ "attempt" : 2, "score" : 8 },
{ "attempt" : 1, "score" : 10 }
]
}

See also:
$push operator,
$each modifier,
$sort modifier, and
$slice modifier.

3.7 Iterate a Cursor in the mongo Shell

The db.collection.find() method returns a cursor. To access the documents, you need to iterate the cursor.
However, in the mongo shell, if the returned cursor is not assigned to a variable using the var keyword, then the
cursor is automatically iterated up to 20 times to print up to the first 20 documents in the results. The following
describes ways to manually iterate the cursor to access the documents or to use the iterator index.
Manually Iterate the Cursor
In the mongo shell, when you assign the cursor returned from the find() method to a variable using the var
keyword, the cursor does not automatically iterate.

55

You can call the cursor variable in the shell to iterate up to 20 times
following example:

15

and print the matching documents, as in the

var myCursor = db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );

myCursor

You can also use the cursor method next() to access the documents, as in the following example:
var myCursor = db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );
while (myCursor.hasNext()) {
print(tojson(myCursor.next()));
}

As an alternative print operation, consider the printjson() helper method to replace print(tojson()):
var myCursor = db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );
while (myCursor.hasNext()) {
printjson(myCursor.next());
}

You can use the cursor method forEach() to iterate the cursor and access the documents, as in the following
example:
var myCursor =

db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );

myCursor.forEach(printjson);

See JavaScript cursor methods and your driver documentation for more information on cursor methods.
Iterator Index
In the mongo shell, you can use the toArray() method to iterate the cursor and return the documents in an array,
as in the following:
var myCursor = db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );
var documentArray = myCursor.toArray();
var myDocument = documentArray[3];

The toArray() method loads into RAM all documents returned by the cursor; the toArray() method exhausts
the cursor.
Additionally, some drivers provide access to the documents by using an index on the cursor (i.e.
cursor[index]). This is a shortcut for first calling the toArray() method and then using an index on the
resulting array.
Consider the following example:
var myCursor = db.inventory.find( { type: 'food' } );
var myDocument = myCursor[3];

The myCursor[3] is equivalent to the following example:

myCursor.toArray() [3];
15 You can use the DBQuery.shellBatchSize to change the number of iteration from the default value 20. See mongo-shell-executingqueries for more information.

56

3.8 Analyze Query Performance

The explain() cursor method provides statistics about the performance of a query. This data output can be useful
in measuring if and how a query uses an index. 16
Evaluate the Performance of a Query
Consider a collection inventory with the following documents:
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
{

"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"
"_id"

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:

1, "item" : "f1", type: "food", quantity: 500 }

2, "item" : "f2", type: "food", quantity: 100 }
3, "item" : "p1", type: "paper", quantity: 200 }
4, "item" : "p2", type: "paper", quantity: 150 }
5, "item" : "f3", type: "food", quantity: 300 }
6, "item" : "t1", type: "toys", quantity: 500 }
7, "item" : "a1", type: "apparel", quantity: 250 }
8, "item" : "a2", type: "apparel", quantity: 400 }
9, "item" : "t2", type: "toys", quantity: 50 }
10, "item" : "f4", type: "food", quantity: 75 }

Query with No Index

The following query retrieves documents where the quantity field has a value between 100 and 200, inclusive:
db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 200 } } )

The query returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 2, "item" : "f2", "type" : "food", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : 3, "item" : "p1", "type" : "paper", "quantity" : 200 }
{ "_id" : 4, "item" : "p2", "type" : "paper", "quantity" : 150 }

To view the query plan selected, use the explain() method:

db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 200 } } ).explain()

The explain() method returns this output:

{
"cursor" : "BasicCursor",
"isMultiKey" : false,
"n" : 3,
"nscannedObjects" : 10,
"nscanned" : 10,
"nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 10,
"nscannedAllPlans" : 10,
"scanAndOrder" : false,
"indexOnly" : false,
"nYields" : 0,
"nChunkSkips" : 0,
"millis" : 0,
"server" : "myMongoDB.local:27017",
"filterSet" : false
}
16 Because explain() attempts multiple query plans, the explain() method does not reflect an accurate timing of query performance. For
more information on its behavior, see explain().

57

 cursor displays BasicCursor to indicate a collection scan.

n displays 3 to indicate that the query matches and returns three documents.
nscanned and nscannedObjects display 10 to indicate that MongoDB had to scan ten documents (i.e.
all documents in the collection) to find the three matching documents.
The difference between the number of matching documents and the number documents scanned may suggest that, to
improve efficiency, the query might benefit from the use of an index.
Query with Index

To support the query on the quantity field, add an index on the quantity field:
db.inventory.ensureIndex( { quantity: 1 } )

To view the query plan statistics, use the explain() method:

db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 200 } } ).explain()

The explain() method returns this output:

{
"cursor" : "BtreeCursor quantity_1",
"isMultiKey" : false,
"n" : 3,
"nscannedObjects" : 3,
"nscanned" : 3,
"nscannedObjectsAllPlans" : 3,
"nscannedAllPlans" : 3,
"scanAndOrder" : false,
"indexOnly" : false,
"nYields" : 0,
"nChunkSkips" : 0,
"millis" : 0,
"indexBounds" : { "quantity" : [ [ 100, 200 ] ] },
"server" : "myMongoDB.local:27017",
"filterSet" : false
}

cursor displays BtreeCursor quantity_1 to indicate index use and the name of the index.
n displays 3 to indicate that the query matches and returns three documents.
nscanned displays 3 to indicate that MongoDB scanned three index entries.
nscannedObjects displays 3 to indicate that MongoDB scanned three documents.
When run with an index, the query scanned 3 index entries and 3 documents to return 3 matching documents. Without
the index, to return the 3 matching documents, the query had to scan the whole collection, scanning 10 documents.
Compare Performance of Indexes
To manually compare the performance of a query using more than one index, you can use the hint() method in
conjunction with the explain() method.
Consider the following query:
db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 300 }, type: "food" } )

58

The query returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 2, "item" : "f2", "type" : "food", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : 5, "item" : "f3", "type" : "food", "quantity" : 300 }

To support the query, add a compound index. With compound indexes, the order of the fields matter.
For example, add the following two compound indexes. The first index orders by quantity field first, and then the
type field. The second index orders by type first, and then the quantity field.
db.inventory.ensureIndex( { quantity: 1, type: 1 } )
db.inventory.ensureIndex( { type: 1, quantity: 1 } )

Evaluate the effect of the first index on the query:

db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 300 }, type: "food" } ).hint({ quantity: 1, type: 1

The explain() method returns the following output:

{
"cursor" : "BtreeCursor quantity_1_type_1",
"isMultiKey" : false,
"n" : 2,
"nscannedObjects" : 2,
"nscanned" : 5,
...
}

MongoDB scanned 5 index keys (nscanned) to return 2 matching documents (n).

Evaluate the effect of the second index on the query:

db.inventory.find( { quantity: { $gte: 100, $lte: 300 }, type: "food" } ).hint({ type: 1, quantity: 1

The explain() method returns the following output:

{
"cursor" : "BtreeCursor type_1_quantity_1",
"isMultiKey" : false,
"n" : 2,
"nscannedObjects" : 2,
"nscanned" : 2,
...
}

MongoDB scanned 2 index keys (nscanned) to return 2 matching documents (n).

For this example query, the compound index { type:
pound index { quantity: 1, type: 1 }.

1, quantity:

1 } is more efficient than the com-

See also:

Query Optimization (page 11), Query Plans (page 13) http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/optimize-queryhttp://docs.mongodb.org/manual/applications/indexes

3.9 Perform Two Phase Commits

Synopsis
This document provides a pattern for doing multi-document updates or multi-document transactions using a twophase commit approach for writing data to multiple documents. Additionally, you can extend this process to provide
59

a rollback-like (page 64) functionality.

Background
Operations on a single document are always atomic with MongoDB databases; however, operations that involve multiple documents, which are often referred to as multi-document transactions, are not atomic. Since documents can be
fairly complex and contain multiple nested documents, single-document atomicity provides the necessary support
for many practical use cases.
Despite the power of single-document atomic operations, there are cases that require multi-document transactions.
When executing a transaction composed of sequential operations, certain issues arise, such as:
Atomicity: if one operation fails, the previous operation within the transaction must rollback to the previous
state (i.e. the nothing, in all or nothing).
Consistency: if a major failure (i.e. network, hardware) interrupts the transaction, the database must be able to
recover a consistent state.
For situations that require multi-document transactions, you can implement two-phase commit in your application to
provide support for these kinds of multi-document updates. Using two-phase commit ensures that data is consistent
and, in case of an error, the state that preceded the transaction is recoverable (page 64). During the procedure, however,
documents can represent pending data and states.
Note: Because only single-document operations are atomic with MongoDB, two-phase commits can only offer
transaction-like semantics. It is possible for applications to return intermediate data at intermediate points during the
two-phase commit or rollback.

Pattern
Overview

Consider a scenario where you want to transfer funds from account A to account B. In a relational database system,
you can subtract the funds from A and add the funds to B in a single multi-statement transaction. In MongoDB, you
can emulate a two-phase commit to achieve a comparable result.
The examples in this tutorial use the following two collections:
1. A collection named accounts to store account information.
2. A collection named transactions to store information on the fund transfer transactions.
Initialize Source and Destination Accounts

Insert into the accounts collection a document for account A and a document for account B.
db.accounts.insert(
[
{ _id: "A", balance: 1000, pendingTransactions: [] },
{ _id: "B", balance: 1000, pendingTransactions: [] }
]
)

The operation returns a BulkWriteResult() object with the status of the operation. Upon successful insert, the
BulkWriteResult() has nInserted set to 2 .

60

Initialize Transfer Record

For each fund transfer to perform, insert into the transactions collection a document with the transfer information.
The document contains the following fields:
source and destination fields, which refer to the _id fields from the accounts collection,
value field, which specifies the amount of transfer affecting the balance of the source and
destination accounts,
state field, which reflects the current state of the transfer. The state field can have the value of initial,
pending, applied, done, canceling, and canceled.
lastModified field, which reflects last modification date.
To initialize the transfer of 100 from account A to account B, insert into the transactions collection a document
with the transfer information, the transaction state of "initial", and the lastModified field set to the current
date:

db.transactions.insert(
{ _id: 1, source: "A", destination: "B", value: 100, state: "initial", lastModified: new Date() }
)

The operation returns a WriteResult() object with the status of the operation. Upon successful insert, the
WriteResult() object has nInserted set to 1.
Transfer Funds Between Accounts Using Two-Phase Commit

Step 1: Retrieve the transaction to start. From the transactions collection, find a transaction in the initial
state. Currently the transactions collection has only one document, namely the one added in the Initialize
Transfer Record (page 61) step. If the collection contains additional documents, the query will return any transaction
with an initial state unless you specify additional query conditions.
var t = db.transactions.findOne( { state: "initial" } )

Type the variable t in the mongo shell to print the contents of the variable. The operation should print a document
similar to the following except the lastModified field should reflect date of your insert operation:
{ "_id" : 1, "source" : "A", "destination" : "B", "value" : 100, "state" : "initial", "lastModified"

Step 2: Update transaction state to pending. Set the transaction state from initial to pending and use the
$currentDate operator to set the lastModified field to the current date.
db.transactions.update(
{ _id: t._id, state: "initial" },
{
$set: { state: "pending" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

The operation returns a WriteResult() object with the status of the operation. Upon successful update, the
nMatched and nModified displays 1.
In the update statement, the state: "initial" condition ensures that no other process has already updated this
record. If nMatched and nModified is 0, go back to the first step to get a different transaction and restart the
procedure.

61

Step 3: Apply the transaction to both accounts. Apply the transaction t to both accounts using the update()
method if the transaction has not been applied to the accounts. In the update condition, include the condition
pendingTransactions: { $ne: t._id } in order to avoid re-applying the transaction if the step is run
more than once.
To apply the transaction to the account, update both the balance field and the pendingTransactions field.
Update the source account, subtracting from its balance the transaction value and adding to its
pendingTransactions array the transaction _id.
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.source, pendingTransactions: { $ne: t._id } },
{ $inc: { balance: -t.value }, $push: { pendingTransactions: t._id } }
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Update the destination account, adding to its balance the transaction value and adding to its
pendingTransactions array the transaction _id .
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.destination, pendingTransactions: { $ne: t._id } },
{ $inc: { balance: t.value }, $push: { pendingTransactions: t._id } }
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Step 4: Update transaction state to applied. Use the following update() operation to set the transactions
state to applied and update the lastModified field:
db.transactions.update(
{ _id: t._id, state: "pending" },
{
$set: { state: "applied" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Step 5: Update both accounts list of pending transactions. Remove the applied transaction _id from the
pendingTransactions array for both accounts.
Update the source account.
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.source, pendingTransactions: t._id },
{ $pull: { pendingTransactions: t._id } }
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Update the destination account.
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.destination, pendingTransactions: t._id },
{ $pull: { pendingTransactions: t._id } }
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
62

Step 6: Update transaction state to done. Complete the transaction by setting the state of the transaction to
done and updating the lastModified field:
db.transactions.update(
{ _id: t._id, state: "applied" },
{
$set: { state: "done" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Recovering from Failure Scenarios
The most important part of the transaction procedure is not the prototypical example above, but rather the possibility
for recovering from the various failure scenarios when transactions do not complete successfully. This section presents
an overview of possible failures and provides steps to recover from these kinds of events.
Recovery Operations

The two-phase commit pattern allows applications running the sequence to resume the transaction and arrive at a
consistent state. Run the recovery operations at application startup, and possibly at regular intervals, to catch any
unfinished transactions.
The time required to reach a consistent state depends on how long the application needs to recover each transaction.
The following recovery procedures uses the lastModified date as an indicator of whether the pending transaction
requires recovery; specifically, if the pending or applied transaction has not been updated in the last 30 minutes,
the procedures determine that these transactions require recovery. You can use different conditions to make this
determination.
Transactions in Pending State To recover from failures that occur after step Update transaction state to pending. (page ??) but before Update transaction state to applied. (page ??)step, retrieve from the transactions
collection a pending transaction for recovery:
var dateThreshold = new Date();
dateThreshold.setMinutes(dateThreshold.getMinutes() - 30);
var t = db.transactions.findOne( { state: "pending", lastModified: { $lt: dateThreshold } } );

And resume from step Apply the transaction to both accounts. (page ??)
Transactions in Applied State To recover from failures that occur after step Update transaction state to applied.
(page ??) but before Update transaction state to done. (page ??)step, retrieve from the transactions collection
an applied transaction for recovery:
var dateThreshold = new Date();
dateThreshold.setMinutes(dateThreshold.getMinutes() - 30);
var t = db.transactions.findOne( { state: "applied", lastModified: { $lt: dateThreshold } } );

And resume from Update both accounts list of pending transactions. (page ??)

63

Rollback Operations

In some cases, you may need to roll back or undo a transaction; e.g., if the application needs to cancel the
transaction or if one of the accounts does not exist or stops existing during the transaction.
Transactions in Applied State After the Update transaction state to applied. (page ??) step, you should not
roll back the transaction. Instead, complete that transaction and create a new transaction (page 61) to reverse the
transaction by switching the values in the source and the destination fields.
Transactions in Pending State After the Update transaction state to pending. (page ??) step, but before the
Update transaction state to applied. (page ??) step, you can rollback the transaction using the following procedure:
Step 1: Update transaction state to canceling. Update the transaction state from pending to canceling.
db.transactions.update(
{ _id: t._id, state: "pending" },
{
$set: { state: "canceling" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Step 2: Undo the transaction on both accounts. To undo the transaction on both accounts, reverse the transaction
t if the transaction has been applied. In the update condition, include the condition pendingTransactions:
t._id in order to update the account only if the pending transaction has been applied.
Update the destination account, subtracting from its balance the transaction value and removing the transaction
_id from the pendingTransactions array.
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.destination, pendingTransactions: t._id },
{
$inc: { balance: -t.value },
$pull: { pendingTransactions: t._id }
}
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to
1. If the pending transaction has not been previously applied to this account, no document will match the update
condition and nMatched and nModified will be 0.
Update the source account, adding to its balance the transaction value and removing the transaction _id from
the pendingTransactions array.
db.accounts.update(
{ _id: t.source, pendingTransactions: t._id },
{
$inc: { balance: t.value},
$pull: { pendingTransactions: t._id }
}
)

64

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to
1. If the pending transaction has not been previously applied to this account, no document will match the update
condition and nMatched and nModified will be 0.
Step 3: Update transaction state to canceled. To finish the rollback, update the transaction state from
canceling to cancelled.
db.transactions.update(
{ _id: t._id, state: "canceling" },
{
$set: { state: "cancelled" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
}
)

Upon successful update, the method returns a WriteResult() object with nMatched and nModified set to 1.
Multiple Applications
Transactions exist, in part, so that multiple applications can create and run operations concurrently without causing
data inconsistency or conflicts. In our procedure, to update or retrieve the transaction document, the update conditions
include a condition on the state field to prevent reapplication of the transaction by multiple applications.
For example, applications App1 and App2 both grab the same transaction, which is in the initial state. App1
applies the whole transaction before App2 starts. When App2 attempts to perform the Update transaction state to
pending. (page ??) step, the update condition, which includes the state: "initial" criterion, will not match
any document, and the nMatched and nModified will be 0. This should signal to App2 to go back to the first step
to restart the procedure with a different transaction.
When multiple applications are running, it is crucial that only one application can handle a given transaction at any
point in time. As such, in addition including the expected state of the transaction in the update condition, you can
also create a marker in the transaction document itself to identify the application that is handling the transaction. Use
findAndModify() method to modify the transaction and get it back in one step:
t = db.transactions.findAndModify(
{
query: { state: "initial", application: { $exists: false } },
update:
{
$set: { state: "pending", application: "App1" },
$currentDate: { lastModified: true }
},
new: true
}
)

Amend the transaction operations to ensure that only applications that match the identifier in the application field
apply the transaction.
If the application App1 fails during transaction execution, you can use the recovery procedures (page 63), but applications should ensure that they own the transaction before applying the transaction. For example to find and resume
the pending job, use a query that resembles the following:
var dateThreshold = new Date();
dateThreshold.setMinutes(dateThreshold.getMinutes() - 30);
db.transactions.find(

65

{
application: "App1",
state: "pending",
lastModified: { $lt: dateThreshold }
}
)

Using Two-Phase Commits in Production Applications

The example transaction above is intentionally simple. For example, it assumes that it is always possible to roll back
operations to an account and that account balances can hold negative values.
Production implementations would likely be more complex. Typically, accounts need information about current balance, pending credits, and pending debits.
For all transactions, ensure that you use the appropriate level of write concern (page 23) for your deployment.

3.10 Update Document if Current

Overview
The Update if Current pattern is an approach to concurrency control (page 28) when multiple applications have access
to the data.
Pattern
The pattern queries for the document to update. Then, for each field to modify, the pattern includes the field and its
value in the returned document in the query predicate for the update operation. This way, the update only modifies the
document fields if the fields have not changed since the query.
Example
Consider the following example in the mongo shell. The example updates the quantity and the reordered fields
of a document only if the fields have not changed since the query.
Changed in version 2.6: The db.collection.update() method now returns a WriteResult() object that
contains the status of the operation. Previous versions required an extra db.getLastErrorObj() method call.
var myDocument = db.products.findOne( { sku: "abc123" } );
if ( myDocument ) {
var oldQuantity = myDocument.quantity;
var oldReordered = myDocument.reordered;
var results = db.products.update(
{
_id: myDocument._id,
quantity: oldQuantity,
reordered: oldReordered
},
{
$inc: { quantity: 50 },
$set: { reordered: true }
}

66

)
if ( results.hasWriteError() ) {
print( "unexpected error updating document: " + tojson(results) );
}
else if ( results.nMatched === 0 ) {
print( "No matching document for " +
"{ _id: "+ myDocument._id.toString() +
", quantity: " + oldQuantity +
", reordered: " + oldReordered
+ " } "
);
}
}

Modifications to the Pattern

Another approach is to add a version field to the documents. Applications increment this field upon each update
operation to the documents. You must be able to ensure that all clients that connect to your database include the
version field in the query predicate. To associate increasing numbers with documents in a collection, you can use
one of the methods described in Create an Auto-Incrementing Sequence Field (page 69).
For more approaches, see Concurrency Control (page 28).

3.11 Create Tailable Cursor

Overview
By default, MongoDB will automatically close a cursor when the client has exhausted all results in the cursor. However, for capped collections you may use a Tailable Cursor that remains open after the client exhausts the
results in the initial cursor. Tailable cursors are conceptually equivalent to the tail Unix command with the -f
option (i.e. with follow mode). After clients insert new additional documents into a capped collection, the tailable
cursor will continue to retrieve documents.
Use tailable cursors on capped collections that have high write volumes where indexes arent practical. For instance,
MongoDB replication uses tailable cursors to tail the primarys oplog.
Note: If your query is on an indexed field, do not use tailable cursors, but instead, use a regular cursor. Keep track of
the last value of the indexed field returned by the query. To retrieve the newly added documents, query the collection
again using the last value of the indexed field in the query criteria, as in the following example:
db.<collection>.find( { indexedField: { $gt: <lastvalue> } } )

Consider the following behaviors related to tailable cursors:

Tailable cursors do not use indexes and return documents in natural order.
Because tailable cursors do not use indexes, the initial scan for the query may be expensive; but, after initially
exhausting the cursor, subsequent retrievals of the newly added documents are inexpensive.
Tailable cursors may become dead, or invalid, if either:
the query returns no match.
the cursor returns the document at the end of the collection and then the application deletes those document.

67

A dead cursor has an id of 0.

See your driver documentation for the driver-specific method to specify the tailable cursor. For more information on the details of specifying a tailable cursor, see MongoDB wire protocol17 documentation.
C++ Example
The tail function uses a tailable cursor to output the results from a query to a capped collection:
The function handles the case of the dead cursor by having the query be inside a loop.
To periodically check for new data, the cursor->more() statement is also inside a loop.
#include "client/dbclient.h"
using namespace mongo;
/*
* Example of a tailable cursor.
* The function "tails" the capped collection (ns) and output elements as they are added.
* The function also handles the possibility of a dead cursor by tracking the field 'insertDate'.
* New documents are added with increasing values of 'insertDate'.
*/
void tail(DBClientBase& conn, const char *ns) {
BSONElement lastValue = minKey.firstElement();
Query query = Query().hint( BSON( "$natural" << 1 ) );
while ( 1 ) {
auto_ptr<DBClientCursor> c =
conn.query(ns, query, 0, 0, 0,
QueryOption_CursorTailable | QueryOption_AwaitData );
while ( 1 ) {
if ( !c->more() ) {
if ( c->isDead() ) {
break;
}
continue;
}
BSONObj o = c->next();
lastValue = o["insertDate"];
cout << o.toString() << endl;
}
query = QUERY( "insertDate" << GT << lastValue ).hint( BSON( "$natural" << 1 ) );
}
}

The tail function performs the following actions:

Initialize the lastValue variable, which tracks the last accessed value. The function will use the lastValue
if the cursor becomes invalid and tail needs to restart the query. Use hint() to ensure that the query uses
17 http://docs.mongodb.org/meta-driver/latest/legacy/mongodb-wire-protocol

68

the $natural order.

In an outer while(1) loop,
Query the capped collection and return a tailable cursor that blocks for several seconds waiting for new
documents
auto_ptr<DBClientCursor> c =
conn.query(ns, query, 0, 0, 0,
QueryOption_CursorTailable | QueryOption_AwaitData );

* Specify the capped collection using ns as an argument to the function.

* Set the QueryOption_CursorTailable option to create a tailable cursor.
* Set the QueryOption_AwaitData option so that the returned cursor blocks for a few seconds to
wait for data.
In an inner while (1) loop, read the documents from the cursor:
* If the cursor has no more documents and is not invalid, loop the inner while loop to recheck for
more documents.
* If the cursor has no more documents and is dead, break the inner while loop.
* If the cursor has documents:
output the document,
update the lastValue value,
and loop the inner while (1) loop to recheck for more documents.
If the logic breaks out of the inner while (1) loop and the cursor is invalid:
* Use the lastValue value to create a new query condition that matches documents added after the
lastValue. Explicitly ensure $natural order with the hint() method:
query = QUERY( "insertDate" << GT << lastValue ).hint( BSON( "$natural" << 1 ) );

* Loop through the outer while (1) loop to re-query with the new query condition and repeat.
See also:
Detailed blog post on tailable cursor18

3.12 Create an Auto-Incrementing Sequence Field

Synopsis
MongoDB reserves the _id field in the top level of all documents as a primary key. _id must be unique, and always
has an index with a unique constraint. However, except for the unique constraint you can use any value for the _id
field in your collections. This tutorial describes two methods for creating an incrementing sequence number for the
_id field using the following:
Use Counters Collection (page 70)
Optimistic Loop (page 71)
18 http://shtylman.com/post/the-tail-of-mongodb

69

Considerations
Generally in MongoDB, you would not use an auto-increment pattern for the _id field, or any field, because it does
not scale for databases with large numbers of documents. Typically the default value ObjectId is more ideal for the
_id.
Procedures
Use Counters Collection

Counter Collection Implementation Use a separate counters collection to track the last number sequence used.
The _id field contains the sequence name and the seq field contains the last value of the sequence.
1. Insert into the counters collection, the initial value for the userid:
db.counters.insert(
{
_id: "userid",
seq: 0
}
)

2. Create a getNextSequence function that accepts a name of the sequence. The function uses the
findAndModify() method to atomically increment the seq value and return this new value:
function getNextSequence(name) {
var ret = db.counters.findAndModify(
{
query: { _id: name },
update: { $inc: { seq: 1 } },
new: true
}
);
return ret.seq;
}

3. Use this getNextSequence() function during insert().

db.users.insert(
{
_id: getNextSequence("userid"),
name: "Sarah C."
}
)
db.users.insert(
{
_id: getNextSequence("userid"),
name: "Bob D."
}
)

You can verify the results with find():

db.users.find()

The _id fields contain incrementing sequence values:

70

{
_id : 1,
name : "Sarah C."
}
{
_id : 2,
name : "Bob D."
}

findAndModify Behavior When findAndModify() includes the upsert: true option and the query
field(s) is not uniquely indexed, the method could insert a document multiple times in certain circumstances. For
instance, if multiple clients each invoke the method with the same query condition and these methods complete the
find phase before any of methods perform the modify phase, these methods could insert the same document.
In the counters collection example, the query field is the _id field, which always has a unique index. Consider
that the findAndModify() includes the upsert: true option, as in the following modified example:
function getNextSequence(name) {
var ret = db.counters.findAndModify(
{
query: { _id: name },
update: { $inc: { seq: 1 } },
new: true,
upsert: true
}
);
return ret.seq;
}

If multiple clients were to invoke the getNextSequence() method with the same name parameter, then the
methods would observe one of the following behaviors:
Exactly one findAndModify() would successfully insert a new document.
Zero or more findAndModify() methods would update the newly inserted document.
Zero or more findAndModify() methods would fail when they attempted to insert a duplicate.
If the method fails due to a unique index constraint violation, retry the method. Absent a delete of the document, the
retry should not fail.
Optimistic Loop

In this pattern, an Optimistic Loop calculates the incremented _id value and attempts to insert a document with the
calculated _id value. If the insert is successful, the loop ends. Otherwise, the loop will iterate through possible _id
values until the insert is successful.
1. Create a function named insertDocument that performs the insert if not present loop. The function wraps
the insert() method and takes a doc and a targetCollection arguments.
Changed in version 2.6: The db.collection.insert() method now returns a writeresults-insert object
that contains the status of the operation. Previous versions required an extra db.getLastErrorObj()
method call.
function insertDocument(doc, targetCollection) {
while (1) {

71

var cursor = targetCollection.find( {}, { _id: 1 } ).sort( { _id: -1 } ).limit(1);

var seq = cursor.hasNext() ? cursor.next()._id + 1 : 1;
doc._id = seq;
var results = targetCollection.insert(doc);
if( results.hasWriteError() ) {
if( results.writeError.code == 11000 /* dup key */ )
continue;
else
print( "unexpected error inserting data: " + tojson( results ) );
}
break;
}
}

The while (1) loop performs the following actions:

Queries the targetCollection for the document with the maximum _id value.
Determines the next sequence value for _id by:
adding 1 to the returned _id value if the returned cursor points to a document.
otherwise: it sets the next sequence value to 1 if the returned cursor points to no document.
For the doc to insert, set its _id field to the calculated sequence value seq.
Insert the doc into the targetCollection.
If the insert operation errors with duplicate key, repeat the loop. Otherwise, if the insert operation encounters some other error or if the operation succeeds, break out of the loop.
2. Use the insertDocument() function to perform an insert:
var myCollection = db.users2;
insertDocument(
{
name: "Grace H."
},
myCollection
);
insertDocument(
{
name: "Ted R."
},
myCollection
)

You can verify the results with find():

db.users2.find()

The _id fields contain incrementing sequence values:

72

{
_id: 1,
name: "Grace H."
}
{
_id : 2,
"name" : "Ted R."
}

The while loop may iterate many times in collections with larger insert volumes.

4 MongoDB CRUD Reference

4.1 Query Cursor Methods
Name
Description
cursor.count() Returns a count of the documents in a cursor.
cursor.explain() Reports on the query execution plan, including index use, for a cursor.
cursor.hint()
Forces MongoDB to use a specific index for a query.
cursor.limit() Constrains the size of a cursors result set.
cursor.next()
Returns the next document in a cursor.
cursor.skip()
Returns a cursor that begins returning results only after passing or skipping a number of
documents.
cursor.sort()
Returns results ordered according to a sort specification.
cursor.toArray() Returns an array that contains all documents returned by the cursor.

4.2 Query and Data Manipulation Collection Methods

Name
Description
db.collection.count() Wraps count to return a count of the number of documents in a collection or
matching a query.
db.collection.distinct()
Returns an array of documents that have distinct values for the specified field.
db.collection.find() Performs a query on a collection and returns a cursor object.
db.collection.findOne()Performs a query and returns a single document.
db.collection.insert() Creates a new document in a collection.
db.collection.remove() Deletes documents from a collection.
db.collection.save() Provides a wrapper around an insert() and update() to insert new
documents.
db.collection.update() Modifies a document in a collection.

4.3 MongoDB CRUD Reference Documentation

Write Concern Reference (page 74) Configuration options associated with the guarantee MongoDB provides when
reporting on the success of a write operation.
SQL to MongoDB Mapping Chart (page 75) An overview of common database operations showing both the MongoDB operations and SQL statements.
The bios Example Collection (page 80) Sample data for experimenting with MongoDB. insert(), update()
and find() pages use the data for some of their examples.

73

Write Concern Reference

Write concern (page 23) describes the guarantee that MongoDB provides when reporting on the success of a write
operation.
Changed in version 2.6: A new protocol for write operations integrates write concerns with the write operations and
eliminates the need to call the getLastError command. Previous versions required a getLastError command
immediately after a write operation to specify the write concern.
Read Isolation Behavior

MongoDB allows clients to read documents inserted or modified before it commits these modifications to disk, regardless of write concern level or journaling configuration. As a result, applications may observe two classes of behaviors:
For systems with multiple concurrent readers and writers, MongoDB will allow clients to read the results of a
write operation before the write operation returns.
If the mongod terminates before the journal commits, even if a write returns successfully, queries may have
read data that will not exist after the mongod restarts.
Other database systems refer to these isolation semantics as read uncommitted. For all inserts and updates, MongoDB modifies each document in isolation: clients never see documents in intermediate states. For multi-document
operations, MongoDB does not provide any multi-document transactions or isolation.
When mongod returns a successful journaled write concern, the data is fully committed to disk and will be available
after mongod restarts.
For replica sets, write operations are durable only after a write replicates and commits to the journal of a majority
of the voting members of the set. 19 MongoDB regularly commits data to the journal regardless of journaled write
concern: use the commitIntervalMs to control how often a mongod commits the journal.
Available Write Concern

Write concern can include the w (page 74) option to specify the required number of acknowledgments before returning,
the j (page 75) option to require writes to the journal before returning, and wtimeout (page 75) option to specify a time
limit to prevent write operations from blocking indefinitely.
In sharded clusters, mongos instances will pass the write concern on to the shard.
w Option The w option provides the ability to disable write concern entirely as well as specify the write concern for
replica sets.
MongoDB uses w:

1 as the default write concern. w:

1 provides basic receipt acknowledgment.

The w option accepts the following values:

19 For the purposes of write concern, w:majority refers to a majority of all the members in the set. As a result, arbiters, non-voting members,
passive members, hidden members and delayed members are all included in the definition of majority write concern.

74

Value
1

<Number
greater than
1>

"majority"

<tag set>

Description
Provides acknowledgment of write operations on a standalone mongod or the primary in a
replica set.
This is the default write concern for MongoDB.
Disables basic acknowledgment of write operations, but returns information about socket
exceptions and networking errors to the application.
If you disable basic write operation acknowledgment but require journal commit
acknowledgment, the journal commit prevails, and the server will require that mongod
acknowledge the write operation.
Guarantees that write operations have propagated successfully to the specified number of replica
set members including the primary.
For example, w: 2 indicates acknowledgements from the primary and at least one secondary.
If you set w to a number that is greater than the number of set members that hold data,
MongoDB waits for the non-existent members to become available, which means MongoDB
blocks indefinitely.
Confirms that write operations have propagated to the majority of configured replica set: a
majority of the sets configured members must acknowledge the write operation before it
succeeds. This allows you to avoid hard coding assumptions about the size of your replica set
into your application.
Changed in version 2.6: In Master/Slave deployments, MongoDB treats w:
"majority" as equivalent to w: 1. In earlier versions of MongoDB, w: "majority"
produces an error in master/slave deployments.
By specifying a tag set, you can have fine-grained control over which replica set members must
acknowledge a write operation to satisfy the required level of write concern.

j Option The j option confirms that the mongod instance has written the data to the on-disk journal. This ensures
that data is not lost if the mongod instance shuts down unexpectedly. Set to true to enable.
Changed in version 2.6: Specifying a write concern that includes j: true to a mongod or mongos running with
--nojournal option now errors. Previous versions would ignore the j: true.
Note: Requiring journaled write concern in a replica set only requires a journal commit of the write operation to the
primary of the set regardless of the level of replica acknowledged write concern.

wtimeout This option specifies a time limit, in milliseconds, for the write concern. wtimeout is only applicable
for w values greater than 1.
wtimeout causes write operations to return with an error after the specified limit, even if the required write concern
will eventually succeed. When these write operations return, MongoDB does not undo successful data modifications
performed before the write concern exceeded the wtimeout time limit.
If you do not specify the wtimeout option and the level of write concern is unachievable, the write operation will
block indefinitely. Specifying a wtimeout value of 0 is equivalent to a write concern without the wtimeout option.
See also:
Write Concern Introduction (page 23) and Write Concern for Replica Sets (page 25).
SQL to MongoDB Mapping Chart
In addition to the charts that follow, you might want to consider the http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/faq
section for a selection of common questions about MongoDB.

75

Terminology and Concepts

The following table presents the various SQL terminology and concepts and the corresponding MongoDB terminology
and concepts.
SQL Terms/Concepts
database
table
row
column
index
table joins
primary key
Specify any unique column or column
combination as primary key.
aggregation (e.g. group by)

MongoDB Terms/Concepts
database
collection
document or BSON document
field
index
embedded documents and linking
primary key
In MongoDB, the primary key is automatically set to the _id field.

aggregation pipeline
See the
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/sql-aggregation-co

Executables

The following table presents some database executables and the corresponding MongoDB executables. This table is
not meant to be exhaustive.
Database Server
Database Client

MongoDB
mongod
mongo

MySQL
mysqld
mysql

Oracle
oracle
sqlplus

Informix
IDS
DB-Access

DB2
DB2 Server
DB2 Client

Examples

The following table presents the various SQL statements and the corresponding MongoDB statements. The examples
in the table assume the following conditions:
The SQL examples assume a table named users.
The MongoDB examples assume a collection named users that contain documents of the following prototype:
{
_id: ObjectId("509a8fb2f3f4948bd2f983a0"),
user_id: "abc123",
age: 55,
status: 'A'
}

Create and Alter The following table presents the various SQL statements related to table-level actions and the
corresponding MongoDB statements.

76

SQL Schema Statements

CREATE TABLE users (
id MEDIUMINT NOT NULL
AUTO_INCREMENT,
user_id Varchar(30),
age Number,
status char(1),
PRIMARY KEY (id)
)

ALTER TABLE users

ADD join_date DATETIME

ALTER TABLE users

DROP COLUMN join_date

MongoDB Schema Statements

Implicitly created on first insert() operation. The
primary key _id is automatically added if _id field is
not specified.
db.users.insert( {
user_id: "abc123",
age: 55,
status: "A"
} )
However, you can also explicitly create a collection:
db.createCollection("users")
Collections do not describe or enforce the structure of
its documents; i.e. there is no structural alteration at the
collection level.
However, at the document level, update() operations
can add fields to existing documents using the $set operator.
db.users.update(
{ },
{ $set: { join_date: new Date() } },
{ multi: true }
)
Collections do not describe or enforce the structure of
its documents; i.e. there is no structural alteration at the
collection level.
However, at the document level, update() operations
can remove fields from documents using the $unset
operator.
db.users.update(
{ },
{ $unset: { join_date: "" } },
{ multi: true }
)

CREATE INDEX idx_user_id_asc

ON users(user_id)

db.users.ensureIndex( { user_id: 1 } )

CREATE INDEX
idx_user_id_asc_age_desc
ON users(user_id, age DESC)

db.users.ensureIndex( { user_id: 1, age: -1 } )

DROP TABLE users

db.users.drop()

For
more
information,
see
db.collection.insert(),
db.createCollection(),
db.collection.update(),
$set,
$unset,
db.collection.ensureIndex(),
indexes,
db.collection.drop(), and http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/data-models.
Insert The following table presents the various SQL statements related to inserting records into tables and the corresponding MongoDB statements.

77

SQL INSERT Statements

MongoDB insert() Statements

INSERT INTO users(user_id,

age,
status)
VALUES ("bcd001",
45,
"A")

db.users.insert(
{ user_id: "bcd001", age: 45, status: "A" }
)

For more information, see db.collection.insert().

Select The following table presents the various SQL statements related to reading records from tables and the corresponding MongoDB statements.

78

SQL SELECT Statements

MongoDB find() Statements

SELECT *
FROM users

db.users.find()

SELECT id,
user_id,
status
FROM users

db.users.find(
{ },
{ user_id: 1, status: 1 }
)

SELECT user_id, status

FROM users

db.users.find(
{ },
{ user_id: 1, status: 1, _id: 0 }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE status = "A"

db.users.find(
{ status: "A" }
)

SELECT user_id, status

FROM users
WHERE status = "A"

db.users.find(
{ status: "A" },
{ user_id: 1, status: 1, _id: 0 }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE status != "A"

db.users.find(
{ status: { $ne: "A" } }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE status = "A"
AND age = 50

db.users.find(
{ status: "A",
age: 50 }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE status = "A"
OR age = 50

db.users.find(
{ $or: [ { status: "A" } ,
{ age: 50 } ] }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE age > 25

db.users.find(
{ age: { $gt: 25 } }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE age < 25

db.users.find(
{ age: { $lt: 25 } }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE age > 25
AND
age <= 50

db.users.find(
{ age: { $gt: 25, $lte: 50 } }
)

SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE user_id like "%bc%"

db.users.find( { user_id: /bc/ } )

79

For
more
information,
see
db.collection.find(),
db.collection.distinct(),
db.collection.findOne(), $ne $and, $or, $gt, $lt, $exists, $lte, $regex, limit(), skip(),
explain(), sort(), and count().
Update Records The following table presents the various SQL statements related to updating existing records in
tables and the corresponding MongoDB statements.
SQL Update Statements

MongoDB update() Statements

UPDATE users
SET status = "C"
WHERE age > 25

db.users.update(
{ age: { $gt: 25 } },
{ $set: { status: "C" } },
{ multi: true }
)

UPDATE users
SET age = age + 3
WHERE status = "A"

db.users.update(
{ status: "A" } ,
{ $inc: { age: 3 } },
{ multi: true }
)

For more information, see db.collection.update(), $set, $inc, and $gt.

Delete Records The following table presents the various SQL statements related to deleting records from tables and
the corresponding MongoDB statements.
SQL Delete Statements

MongoDB remove() Statements

DELETE FROM users

WHERE status = "D"

db.users.remove( { status: "D" } )

DELETE FROM users

db.users.remove({})

For more information, see db.collection.remove().

The bios Example Collection
The bios collection provides example data for experimenting with MongoDB. Many of this guides examples on
insert, update and read operations create or query data from the bios collection.
The following documents comprise the bios collection. In the examples, the data might be different, as the examples
themselves make changes to the data.
{
"_id" : 1,
"name" : {
"first" : "John",
"last" : "Backus"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1924-12-03T05:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("2007-03-17T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"Fortran",

80

"ALGOL",
"Backus-Naur Form",
"FP"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "W.W. McDowell Award",
"year" : 1967,
"by" : "IEEE Computer Society"
},
{
"award" : "National Medal of Science",
"year" : 1975,
"by" : "National Science Foundation"
},
{
"award" : "Turing Award",
"year" : 1977,
"by" : "ACM"
},
{
"award" : "Draper Prize",
"year" : 1993,
"by" : "National Academy of Engineering"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("51df07b094c6acd67e492f41"),
"name" : {
"first" : "John",
"last" : "McCarthy"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1927-09-04T04:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("2011-12-24T05:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"Lisp",
"Artificial Intelligence",
"ALGOL"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Turing Award",
"year" : 1971,
"by" : "ACM"
},
{
"award" : "Kyoto Prize",
"year" : 1988,
"by" : "Inamori Foundation"
},
{
"award" : "National Medal of Science",
"year" : 1990,
"by" : "National Science Foundation"
}
]

81

}
{
"_id" : 3,
"name" : {
"first" : "Grace",
"last" : "Hopper"
},
"title" : "Rear Admiral",
"birth" : ISODate("1906-12-09T05:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("1992-01-01T05:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"UNIVAC",
"compiler",
"FLOW-MATIC",
"COBOL"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Computer Sciences Man of the Year",
"year" : 1969,
"by" : "Data Processing Management Association"
},
{
"award" : "Distinguished Fellow",
"year" : 1973,
"by" : " British Computer Society"
},
{
"award" : "W. W. McDowell Award",
"year" : 1976,
"by" : "IEEE Computer Society"
},
{
"award" : "National Medal of Technology",
"year" : 1991,
"by" : "United States"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : 4,
"name" : {
"first" : "Kristen",
"last" : "Nygaard"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1926-08-27T04:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("2002-08-10T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"OOP",
"Simula"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Rosing Prize",
"year" : 1999,
"by" : "Norwegian Data Association"

82

},
{
"award" : "Turing Award",
"year" : 2001,
"by" : "ACM"
},
{
"award" : "IEEE John von Neumann Medal",
"year" : 2001,
"by" : "IEEE"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : 5,
"name" : {
"first" : "Ole-Johan",
"last" : "Dahl"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1931-10-12T04:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("2002-06-29T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"OOP",
"Simula"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Rosing Prize",
"year" : 1999,
"by" : "Norwegian Data Association"
},
{
"award" : "Turing Award",
"year" : 2001,
"by" : "ACM"
},
{
"award" : "IEEE John von Neumann Medal",
"year" : 2001,
"by" : "IEEE"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : 6,
"name" : {
"first" : "Guido",
"last" : "van Rossum"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1956-01-31T05:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"Python"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Award for the Advancement of Free Software",

83

"year" : 2001,
"by" : "Free Software Foundation"
},
{
"award" : "NLUUG Award",
"year" : 2003,
"by" : "NLUUG"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("51e062189c6ae665454e301d"),
"name" : {
"first" : "Dennis",
"last" : "Ritchie"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1941-09-09T04:00:00Z"),
"death" : ISODate("2011-10-12T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"UNIX",
"C"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Turing Award",
"year" : 1983,
"by" : "ACM"
},
{
"award" : "National Medal of Technology",
"year" : 1998,
"by" : "United States"
},
{
"award" : "Japan Prize",
"year" : 2011,
"by" : "The Japan Prize Foundation"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : 8,
"name" : {
"first" : "Yukihiro",
"aka" : "Matz",
"last" : "Matsumoto"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1965-04-14T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"Ruby"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "Award for the Advancement of Free Software",
"year" : "2011",
"by" : "Free Software Foundation"

84

}
]
}
{
"_id" : 9,
"name" : {
"first" : "James",
"last" : "Gosling"
},
"birth" : ISODate("1955-05-19T04:00:00Z"),
"contribs" : [
"Java"
],
"awards" : [
{
"award" : "The Economist Innovation Award",
"year" : 2002,
"by" : "The Economist"
},
{
"award" : "Officer of the Order of Canada",
"year" : 2007,
"by" : "Canada"
}
]
}
{
"_id" : 10,
"name" : {
"first" : "Martin",
"last" : "Odersky"
},
"contribs" : [
"Scala"
]
}

85