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Create, View, Update, and Delete Documents

On this page

  • Required Roles
  • Insert Documents
  • View, Filter, and Sort Documents
  • Edit One Document
  • Delete One Document

You can use the Atlas UI to manage documents inside your collections. Documents are individual records in a MongoDB collection and are the basic unit of data in MongoDB.

Viewing documents and collections in the Atlas UI can provide a high-level overview of your database schema. You can use the Atlas UI to ensure you are following MongoDB's core data modeling concepts, such as utilizing embedded documents and arrays.

Tip

See also:

Data Modeling

To insert, edit, or delete documents, you must have been granted access through one of the following roles:

To add one or more documents to a collection through the Atlas UI, you can specify the documents to insert from scratch or you can clone an existing document and modify its fields and values as needed.

1

Select the collection and go to the Find tab.

2

The document editor appears with the _id field with an ObjectId value that reflects the time of its generation and not the insertion time of the document. As such, the ObjectId does not represent a strict insertion order.

3
  • To add a new field after an existing field, hover over the field and click on the plus sign that appears over the field's line number.

  • To delete a field, hover over the field and click on the x sign that appears to the left of the field's line number. You cannot delete the _id field.

  • To edit a field name, value, or type, click on the field name, value, or type.

4
1

Select the collection and go to the Find tab.

2

Atlas UI opens the Insert to Collection dialog.

3
4

Example

The following array of documents inserts three documents into the collection:

[
{
"name": "Alice",
"age": 26,
"email": "alice@abc.com"
},
{
"name": "Bob",
"age": 43,
"email": "bob@def.com"
},
{
"name": "Carol",
"age": 19,
"email": "carol@xyz.com"
}
]
5
1

Select the collection and go to the Find tab.

Up to 20 documents displays in the tab.

2

To specify filter condition, type in a query filter document in the filter bar. For example, to specify equality condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: <value1>, ... }

To use query operators to specify a filter condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: { <queryoperator>: <value1> }, ... }
3

To clone a document displayed in the query results, hover over the document and click on its clone document icon.

Clone document icon

The document editor appears with the _id field with an ObjectId value that reflects the time of its generation and not the insertion time of the document. As such, the ObjectId does not represent a strict insertion order.

4
  • To add a new field after an existing field, hover over the field and click on the plus sign that appears over the field's line number.

  • To delete a field, hover over the field and click on the x sign that appears to the left of the field's line number. You cannot delete the _id field.

  • To edit a field name, value, or type, click on the field name, value, or type.

5

From the Collections tab, you can view documents in a collection. To view documents for a collection:

1

The main panel and Namespaces on the left side list the collections in the database.

Screenshot highlighting databases in the Atlas UI.
click to enlarge
2

The main panel displays the Find view and the Indexes view.

3

The panel displays the documents in the collection. Collections of smaller documents display up to 20 documents per page. Collections of larger documents display a single document per page.

4

You can use the query bar to search for specific documents in your collection. You perform the following actions with the query bar:

  • Filter a query

  • Project fields to include or exclude specific fields in the query results

  • Sort the documents in the results

  • Apply collation to specify language-specific rules

Note

You can't skip documents and omit them from query results from the Atlas query bar. To skip documents, use the $skip pipeline stage in the aggregation pipeline builder.

To specify a filter condition, type a query filter into the Filter field. For example, to specify an equality condition, use a filter with the form:

{ <field1>: <value1>, ... }

To use query operators to specify a filter condition, use a filter with the following form:

{ <field1>: { <queryoperator>: <value1> }, ... }

Note

The Atlas UI does not support date queries that use the IsoDate() function. Instead, use the MongoDB Extended JSON (v2) $date data type for date queries.

For example, the following query returns all documents where the date added to a created_at field is equal to or more recent than midnight on January 1, 2019, UTC time:

{ created_at: { $gte: { $date: "2019-01-01T00:00-00:00" } } }

For more information on specifying query filters, including compound conditions, see Query Documents.

To specify the document fields to include or exclude in the results, click More Options in the query bar and specify the document fields in the Project field.

To include fields, specify the field name and set to 1 in the project document. For example, to include the year and name fields in the documents:

{ year: 1, name: 1 }

Atlas returns the fields specified in the Project field and the _id field, which is returned unless it is explicitly excluded.

To exclude fields, specify the field name and set to 0 in the project document. For example, to exclude the year and name fields in the documents:

{ year: 0, name: 0 }

Atlas returns all fields except the fields specified in Project.

To learn more about project documents, see $project.

To sort the order of the documents in the results, click More Options in the query bar and enter the sort document in the Sort field.

  • To specify ascending order for a field, set the field to 1 in the sort document.

  • To specify descending order for a field, set the field to -1 in the sort documents.

For example, the following sort document sorts results first by year in descending order, and within each year, sorts by name in ascending order:

{ year: -1, name: 1 }

To learn more about sort documents, see $sort.

Important

Feature unavailable in Serverless Instances

Serverless instances don't support this feature at this time. To learn more, see Serverless Instance Limitations.

To specify language-specific rules for string comparison, such as rules for lettercase and accent marks, click More Options in the query bar and enter the collation document in the Collation field. Use the locale field in the collation document to specify the ICU Locale code for the desired language. For example, to use the pinyin variant of the Chinese collation, use the following collation document:

{ "locale" : "zh@collation=pinyin" }

To learn more about collation documents, see Collation.

Note

As you type, the Apply button is disabled and the field name in the User Interface turns red until a valid query is entered.

5

The Atlas UI limits the total byte size of documents shown per page. As a result, you may see varying numbers of documents per page, especially if your documents vary significantly in size.

To edit a document from a collection through the Atlas UI:

1

Select the collection and go to the Find tab.

Up to 20 documents displays in the tab.

2

To specify filter condition, type in a query filter document in the filter bar. For example, to specify equality condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: <value1>, ... }

To use query operators to specify a filter condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: { <queryoperator>: <value1> }, ... }
3

To edit a document displayed in the query results, hover over the document to edit and click on the pencil icon.

The document appears in the document editor:

  • To add a new field, hover over the field and click on the plus sign that appears over the field's line number.

  • To delete a field, hover over the field and click on the x sign that appears to the left of the field's line number. You cannot delete the _id field.

  • To edit a field name, value, or type, click on the field name, value, or type.

  • To revert a specific change, hover over the edited field and click the revert icon that appears to the left of the field's line number.

4

To confirm and save changes, click the Update button.

To cancel all modifications to the document, click the Cancel button.

To delete a document from a collection through the Atlas UI:

1

Select the collection and go to the Find tab.

Up to 20 documents displays in the tab.

2

To specify filter condition, type in a query filter document in the filter bar. For example, to specify equality condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: <value1>, ... }

To use query operators to specify a filter condition, use a filter document of the form:

{ <field1>: { <queryoperator>: <value1> }, ... }
3

To delete a document displayed in the query results, hover over the document to delete and click on the trash can icon.

The document is flagged for deletion.

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