MongoDB – Current Date Operator ($currentDate)

MongoDB provides different types of field update operators to update the values of the fields of the documents and $currentDate operator is one of them. This operator is used to set the value of a field to the current date (either as a timestamp or as a Date).

• The default type of $currentDate operator is a Date.
• This operator can also work with embedded/nested documents or arrays.
• You can use this operator in methods like update(), updateOne(), etc., according to your requirements.
• If the specified field is not found then this operator will add that field in the document.

Syntax:

{ $currentDate: { <field1>: <typeSpecification1>, ... } }

Here, in this method, typeSpecification1 is either a boolean true to set the value of a field to the current date as a Date or a document { $type: "timestamp" } or { $type: "date" } which explicitly specifies the type, here the operator is case-sensitive only accept lowercase “timestamp” or “date”. To specify field in embedded/nested documents with the help of dot notation.

In the following examples, we are working with:

Database: GeeksforGeeks
Collection: Employee
Document: three documents that contain the details of the employees in the form of field-value pairs.

Update the date field using $currentDate operator:

In the example, we are updating the value of joiningDate field of an employee’s document whose first name is Om.

db.Employee.updateOne({"name.first": "Om"},
                      {$currentDate: {joiningDate: true}})

Update the date field in the embedded document using $currentDate operator:

In the example, we are updating the value of joiningDate field of an employee’s document whose first name is .

db.Employee.updateOne({"name.first": "Sumit"},
                      {$currentDate: {"personalDetails.joiningDate": true}})

Adding date field using $currentDate operator:

In the example, we are adding a new date field whose value is assigned by the $cuurentDate operator in the employee’s document whose first name is Amu.

db.Employee.updateOne({"name.first": "Amu"},
                      {$currentDate: {joiningDate: {$type: "date"}}})