Collections

See also:

• Database
• Queries

Collection objects

Collection object is a pointer to a specific collection in the database. If you want to insert new records or query existing ones then you need to have a valid collection object.

NB Collection names can’t start or end with a period nor contain a dollar sign! (.tes$t is not allowed)

Creating collections

Collections can be created with createCollection

db.createCollection([[name[, options]], callback)

where name is the name of the collection, options a set of configuration parameters and callback is a callback function. db is the database object.

The first parameter for the callback is the error object (null if no error) and the second one is the pointer to the newly created collection. If strict mode is on and the table exists, the operation yields in error. With strict mode off (default) the function simple returns the pointer to the existing collection and does not truncate it.

db.createCollection("test", function(err, collection){
    collection.insert({"test":"value"});
});

Creating collections options

Several options can be passed to the createCollection function with options parameter.

* `raw` - driver returns documents as bson binary Buffer objects, `default:false`

Collection properties

• collectionName is the name of the collection (not including the database name as a prefix)
• db is the pointer to the corresponding database object

Example of usage:

console.log("Collection name: "+collection.collectionName)

List existing collections

List names

Collections can be listed with collectionNames

db.collectionNames(callback);

callback gets two parameters - an error object (if error occured) and an array of collection names as strings.

Collection names also include database name, so a collection named posts in a database blog will be listed as blog.posts.

Additionally there’s system collections which should not be altered without knowing exactly what you are doing, these sollections can be identified with system prefix. For example posts.system.indexes.

Example:

var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient
  , format = require('util').format;

MongoClient.connect('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/test', function(err, db) {
  if(err) throw err;
  db.collectionNames(function(err, collections){
      console.log(collections);
  });
});

List collections

Collection objects can be listed with database method collections

db.collections(callback)

Where callback gets two parameters - an error object (if an error occured) and an array of collection objects.

Selecting collections

Existing collections can be opened with collection

db.collection([[name[, options]], callback);

If strict mode is off, then a new collection is created if not already present.

Selecting collections options

Several options can be passed to the collection function with options parameter.

* `raw` - driver returns documents as bson binary Buffer objects, `default:false`

Renaming collections

A collection can be renamed with collection method rename

collection.rename(new_name, callback);

Passing the optional dropTarget boolean as the thrid parameter will allow overwritting of existing collections

collection.rename(new_name, {dropTarget:true}, callback);

Removing records from collections

Records can be erased from a collection with remove

collection.remove([[query[, options]], callback]);

Where

• query is the query that records to be removed need to match. If not set all records will be removed
• options indicate advanced options.
• callback callback function that gets two parameters - an error object (if an error occured) and the count of removed records

Removing collections

A collection can be dropped with drop

collection.drop(callback);

or with dropCollection

db.dropCollection(collection_name, callback)