Export data from MongoDB

MongoDB allows you to export its data into other file formats like JSON or CSV so that the data can be used externally by other applications. So, to export data from the MongoDB database, MongoDB provides a command-line tool known as mongoexport. Using this tool you can exports data of a collection in JSON or CSV(comma-separated value) format. Moreover, we can also use features like limit and sort on a collection while exporting the data.

Note: mongoexport does not run in the mongo shell. So, when you use mongoexport tool you have to exit from the mongo shell.

Syntax:

For exporting data in JSON format

mongoexport –db database_name –collection collection_name –out path_or_name_of_the_file

For exporting data in CSV format 

mongoexport –db database_name –collection collection_name –type=csv –fields fields_names –out path_or_name_of_the_file

Important Points: 

• Here, the out command specifies the directory and the file in which the exported data is to be stored. In case we don’t use –out the file gets created at path where we are at the time of running cmd.
• If the specified file is not created then mongoexport tool will automatically create a file and store data in it.
• If the mongoexport tool is not present in your system then you can install it from here.
• The mongoexport tool also provides options. Some of the commonly used options are:

Option	Description
–help	It will return the information about option and the use of mongoexport
–version	It will return the version of mongoexport
–db	It will specify the name of the database in which mongoexport will run.
–collection	It will specify the collection to export.
–fields	It will specify the fields that will include in the export. If you are specifying multiple fields the use comma in between them. E.g. –fields name, class
–type	It will specify the file type to export. For JSON format use json and for CSV format use csv.
–out	It will specify a file in which the data is going to store.
–skip	Using this option you can control from where mongoexport starts exporting files.
–sort	Using this option you can sort the exporting data.
–limit	Using this option you can limit the number of documents to export.

Examples:

In the following examples, we are working with:

Database: GeeksforGeeks

Collection: students

Documents: five documents that contain the details of the students in the form of field-value pairs.

• Exporting the whole collection in JSON format:

In this example, we are going to export all the documents present in the student collection to a JSON file(named as exportstudents.json) using mongoexport tool.

mongoexport –db GeeksForGeeks –collection students –out C:\Users\Darksider\exportstudents.json 

So, here we export all the 5 documents present in the student collection to a JSON file.

• Exporting only 2 records using limit:

In this example, we are going to export only 2 documents from the student collection to a JSON file(named as studentslim.json) using mongoexport tool.

mongoexport –db GeeksForGeeks –collection students –limit 2 –out C:\Users\Darksider\studentslim.json

So, here we only export 2 documents from the student collection by setting up the value of –limit to 2.

• Exporting the whole collection in CSV format:

In this example, we are going to export all the documents present in the student collection to a CSV file(named as students.csv) using mongoexport tool.

mongoexport –db GeeksForGeeks –collection students –type=csv –fields name,age –out C:\Users\Darksider\students.csv

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