Delete Documents

mongo --host 127.0.0.1:27017

The examples on this page use the inventory collection. To populate the inventory collection, run the following:

db.inventory.deleteMany({})
{ "acknowledged" : true, "deletedCount" : 10 }

db.inventory.insertMany( [
   { item: "journal", qty: 25, size: { h: 14, w: 21, uom: "cm" }, status: "A" },
   { item: "notebook", qty: 50, size: { h: 8.5, w: 11, uom: "in" }, status: "P" },
   { item: "paper", qty: 100, size: { h: 8.5, w: 11, uom: "in" }, status: "D" },
   { item: "planner", qty: 75, size: { h: 22.85, w: 30, uom: "cm" }, status: "D" },
   { item: "postcard", qty: 45, size: { h: 10, w: 15.25, uom: "cm" }, status: "A" },
] );
{
        "acknowledged" : true,
        "insertedIds" : [
                ObjectId("5b56d0e5e68eb0362ce719bc"),
                ObjectId("5b56d0e5e68eb0362ce719bd"),
                ObjectId("5b56d0e5e68eb0362ce719be"),
                ObjectId("5b56d0e5e68eb0362ce719bf"),
                ObjectId("5b56d0e5e68eb0362ce719c0")
        ]
}

Delete Methods

Delete All Documents

To delete all documents from a collection, pass an empty filter document {} to the db.collection.deleteMany() method.

db.inventory.deleteMany({})
{ "acknowledged" : true, "deletedCount" : 5 }

Populate the inventory collection

db.inventory.insertMany( [
   { item: "journal", qty: 25, size: { h: 14, w: 21, uom: "cm" }, status: "A" },
   { item: "notebook", qty: 50, size: { h: 8.5, w: 11, uom: "in" }, status: "P" },
   { item: "paper", qty: 100, size: { h: 8.5, w: 11, uom: "in" }, status: "D" },
   { item: "planner", qty: 75, size: { h: 22.85, w: 30, uom: "cm" }, status: "D" },
   { item: "postcard", qty: 45, size: { h: 10, w: 15.25, uom: "cm" }, status: "A" },
] );
{
        "acknowledged" : true,
        "insertedIds" : [
                ObjectId("5b56d156e68eb0362ce719c1"),
                ObjectId("5b56d156e68eb0362ce719c2"),
                ObjectId("5b56d156e68eb0362ce719c3"),
                ObjectId("5b56d156e68eb0362ce719c4"),
                ObjectId("5b56d156e68eb0362ce719c5")
        ]
}

Delete All Documents that Match a Condition

The following example removes all documents from the inventory collection where the status field equals "A":

db.inventory.deleteMany({ status : "A" })
{ "acknowledged" : true, "deletedCount" : 2 }

Delete Only One Document that Matches a Condition

The following example deletes the first document where status is "D":

db.inventory.deleteOne( { status: "D" } )
{ "acknowledged" : true, "deletedCount" : 1 }

Delete Behavior

Indexes

Delete operations do not drop indexes, even if deleting all documents from a collection.

Atomicity

All write operations in MongoDB are atomic on the level of a single document. For more information on MongoDB and atomicity, see Atomicity and Transactions.

Write Acknowledgement

With write concerns, you can specify the level of acknowledgement requested from MongoDB for write operations. For details, see Write Concern.

Delete