I know I can find documents in sorted order, but can I insert them in sorted order? The data in the database is ordered like set datatype in Redis.
Generally order of records/documents in most (all?) databases is undefined. If you want them returned in a specific order - specify the order when querying. MongoDB is not an exception.
You can't affect what physical location will the new document go to, but you can query by insertion order (see $natural).
Related
If I have two equal values for a field. What would be the order of results for sort on that field? Random or ordered by insertion date?
If two documents have equal values for the field you're sorting on, then MongoDB will return the results in the order they are found on disk (ie Natural order)
from MongoDB Documentation :
natural order:
The order in which the database refers to documents on
disk. This is the default sort order. See $natural and Return in
Natural Order.
This may coincide with insertion date in some case, but not all of the time (especially when you perform insertion/deletion on your collection), so you should assume that this is random ordering
This question already has answers here:
How does MongoDB sort records when no sort order is specified?
(2 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
In my User collection, MongoDB usually orders each new doc in the same order I create them: the last one created is the last one in the collection. But I have detected another collection where the last one I created has the 6 position between 27 docs.
Why is that?
Which order follows each doc in MongoDB collection?
It's called natural order:
natural order
The order in which the database refers to documents on disk. This is the default sort order. See $natural and Return in Natural Order.
This confirms that in general you get them in the same order you inserted, but that's not guaranteed–as you noticed.
Return in Natural Order
The $natural parameter returns items according to their natural order within the database. This ordering is an internal implementation feature, and you should not rely on any particular structure within it.
Index Use
Queries that include a sort by $natural order do not use indexes to fulfill the query predicate with the following exception: If the query predicate is an equality condition on the _id field { _id: <value> }, then the query with the sort by $natural order can use the _id index.
MMAPv1
Typically, the natural order reflects insertion order with the following exception for the MMAPv1 storage engine. For the MMAPv1 storage engine, the natural order does not reflect insertion order if the documents relocate because of document growth or remove operations free up space which are then taken up by newly inserted documents.
Obviously, like the docs mentioned, you should not rely on this default order (This ordering is an internal implementation feature, and you should not rely on any particular structure within it.).
If you need to sort the things, use the sort solutions.
Basically, the following two calls should return documents in the same order (since the default order is $natural):
db.mycollection.find().sort({ "$natural": 1 })
db.mycollection.find()
If you want to sort by another field (e.g. name) you can do that:
db.mycollection.find().sort({ "name": 1 })
For performance reasons, MongoDB never splits a document on the hard drive.
When you start with an empty collection and start inserting document after document into it, mongoDB will place them consecutively on the disk.
But what happens when you update a document and it now takes more space and doesn't fit into its old position anymore without overlapping the next? In that case MongoDB will delete it and re-append it as a new one at the end of the collection file.
Your collection file now has a hole of unused space. This is quite a waste, isn't it? That's why the next document which is inserted and small enough to fit into that hole will be inserted in that hole. That's likely what happened in the case of your second collection.
Bottom line: Never rely on documents being returned in insertion order. When you care about the order, always sort your results.
MongoDB does not "order" the documents at all, unless you ask it to.
The basic insertion will create an ObjectId in the _id primary key value unless you tell it to do otherwise. This ObjectId value is a special value with "monotonic" or "ever increasing" properties, which means each value created is guaranteed to be larger than the last.
If you want "sorted" then do an explicit "sort":
db.collection.find().sort({ "_id": 1 })
Or a "natural" sort means in the order stored on disk:
db.collection.find().sort({ "$natural": 1 })
Which is pretty much the standard unless stated otherwise or an "index" is selected by the query criteria that will determine the sort order. But you can use that to "force" that order if query criteria selected an index that sorted otherwise.
MongoDB documents "move" when grown, and therefore the _id order is not always explicitly the same order as documents are retrieved.
I could find out more about it thanks to the link Return in Natural Order provided by Ionică Bizău.
"The $natural parameter returns items according to their natural order within the database.This ordering is an internal implementation feature, and you should not rely on any particular structure within it.
Typically, the natural order reflects insertion order with the following exception for the MMAPv1 storage engine. For the MMAPv1 storage engine, the natural order does not reflect insertion order if the documents relocate because of document growth or remove operations free up space which are then taken up by newly inserted documents."
Is it possible in MongoDB to insert a new document to the top of a collection? Normally, when creating new document, it is appended or added to the end of the collection.
Please shed some light
The order in which documents are returned from a collection is undefined behavior. Usually documents appear in the order they are inserted, but you can not rely on that. There are several circumstances which can cause the documents to get returned in a different order.
When you want documents in a specific order, you need to sort them explicitly when you search for them.
I'm working with dump of events provided by 3rd party side. And in this dump they have duplicates events, which is fully identical, but have different _id. So my goal is to provide unique only data, so I can't use duplicates event.
Is it possible to build the query which return me only documents with unique value?
Lets say, in each document i have EventId field, and I need all the events, with unique EventID
I can't change dump, have only read permission to it.
You can use db.collection.distinct() method http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/method/db.collection.distinct/
Basic question. Does mongodb find command will always return documents in the order they where added to collection? If no how is it possible to implement selection docs in the right order?
Sort? But what if docs where added simultaneously and say created date is the same, but there was an order still.
Well, yes and ... not exactly.
Documents are default sorted by natural order. Which is initially the order the documents are stored on disk, which is indeed the order in which the documents had been added to a collection.
This order however, is not deterministic, as document may be moved on disk once these documents grow after update operations, and can't be fit into current space anymore. This way the initial (insert) order may change.
The way to guarantee insert order sort is sort by {_id : 1} as long as the _id is of type ObjectId. This will return your documents sorted in ascending order.
Write operations do not take place simultaneously. Write locks are imposed in database level (V 2.4 and on). The first four bytes of _id is insert timestamp, and 3 last digits is a random counter used to distinguish (and sort) between ObjectId instances with same timestamp.
_id field is indexed by default