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mongoexport

Synopsis

mongoexport is a utility that produces a JSON or CSV export of data stored in a MongoDB instance. See the Import and Export MongoDB Data document for a more in depth usage overview, and the mongoimport document for more information regarding the mongoimport utility, which provides the inverse “importing” capability.

Note

Do not use mongoimport and mongoexport for full-scale backups because they may not reliably capture data type information. Use mongodump and mongorestore as described in MongoDB Backup Methods for this kind of functionality.

Options

mongoexport

--help

Returns a basic help and usage text.

--verbose, -v

Increases the amount of internal reporting returned on the command line. Increase the verbosity with the -v form by including the option multiple times, (e.g. -vvvvv.)

--version

Returns the version of the mongoexport utility.

--host <hostname><:port>

Specifies a resolvable hostname for the mongod from which you want to export data. By default mongoexport attempts to connect to a MongoDB process running on the localhost port number 27017.

Optionally, specify a port number to connect a MongoDB instance running on a port other than 27017.

To connect to a replica set, you can specify the replica set seed name, and a seed list of set members, in the following format:

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<replica_set_name>/<hostname1><:port>,<hostname2:<port>,...

--port <port>

Specifies the port number, if the MongoDB instance is not running on the standard port. (i.e. 27017) You may also specify a port number using the mongoexport --host command.

--ipv6

Enables IPv6 support that allows mongoexport to connect to the MongoDB instance using an IPv6 network. All MongoDB programs and processes, including mongoexport, disable IPv6 support by default.

--ssl

New in version 2.4: MongoDB added support for SSL connections to mongod instances in mongoexport.

Note

SSL support in mongoexport is not compiled into the default distribution of MongoDB. See Connect to MongoDB with SSL for more information on SSL and MongoDB.

Additionally, mongoexport does not support connections to mongod instances that require client certificate validation.

Allows mongoexport to connect to mongod instance over an SSL connection.

--username <username>, -u <username>

Specifies a username to authenticate to the MongoDB instance, if your database requires authentication. Use in conjunction with the mongoexport --password option to supply a password.

--password <password>, -p <password>

Specifies a password to authenticate to the MongoDB instance. Use in conjunction with the --username option to supply a username.

If you specify a --username and do not pass an argument to --password, mongoexport will prompt for a password interactively. If you do not specify a password on the command line, --password must be the last argument specified.

--authenticationDatabase <dbname>

New in version 2.4.

Specifies the database that holds the user’s (e.g --username) credentials.

By default, mongoexport assumes that the database specified to the --db argument holds the user’s credentials, unless you specify --authenticationDatabase.

See userSource, system.users Privilege Documents and User Privilege Roles in MongoDB for more information about delegated authentication in MongoDB.

--authenticationMechanism <name>

New in version 2.4.

Specifies the authentication mechanism. By default, the authentication mechanism is MONGODB-CR, which is the MongoDB challenge/response authentication mechanism. In MongoDB Enterprise, mongoexport also includes support for GSSAPI to handle Kerberos authentication.

See Deploy MongoDB with Kerberos Authentication for more information about Kerberos authentication.

--dbpath <path>

Specifies the directory of the MongoDB data files. If used, the --dbpath option enables mongoexport to attach directly to local data files and insert the data without the mongod. To run with --dbpath, mongoexport needs to lock access to the data directory: as a result, no mongod can access the same path while the process runs.

--directoryperdb

Use the --directoryperdb in conjunction with the corresponding option to mongod, which allows mongoexport to export data from MongoDB instances that have every database’s files saved in discrete directories on the disk. This option is only relevant when specifying the --dbpath option.

--journal

Allows mongoexport operations to access the durability journal to ensure that the export is in a valid state. This option is only relevant when specifying the --dbpath option.

--db <db>, -d <db>

Use the --db option to specify the name of the database that contains the collection you want to export.

--collection <collection>, -c <collection>

Use the --collection option to specify the collection that you want mongoexport to export.

--fields <field1[,field2]>, -f <field1[,field2]>

Specify a field or fields to include in the export. Use a comma separated list of fields to specify multiple fields.

For --csv output formats, mongoexport includes only the specified field(s), and the specified field(s) can be a field within a sub-document.

For JSON output formats, mongoexport includes only the specified field(s) and the _id field, and if the specified field(s) is a field within a sub-document, the mongoexport includes the sub-document with all its fields, not just the specified field within the document.

--fieldFile <file>

As an alternative to --fields, the --fieldFile option allows you to specify in a file the field or fields to include in the export and is only valid with the --csv option. The file must have only one field per line, and the line(s) must end with the LF character (0x0A).

mongoexport includes only the specified field(s). The specified field(s) can be a field within a sub-document.

--query <JSON>, -q <JSON>

Provides a JSON document as a query that optionally limits the documents returned in the export.

Example

Given a collection named records in the database test with the following documents:

{ "_id" : ObjectId("51f0188846a64a1ed98fde7c"), "a" : 1 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("520e61b0c6646578e3661b59"), "a" : 1, "b" : 2 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("520e642bb7fa4ea22d6b1871"), "a" : 2, "b" : 3, "c" : 5 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("520e6431b7fa4ea22d6b1872"), "a" : 3, "b" : 3, "c" : 6 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("520e6445b7fa4ea22d6b1873"), "a" : 5, "b" : 6, "c" : 8 }

The following mongoexport uses the -q option to export only the documents with the field a greater than or equal to ($gte) to 3:

mongoexport -d test -c records -q "{ a: { \$gte: 3 } } }" --out exportdir/myRecords.json

The resulting file contains the following documents:

{ "_id" : { "$oid" : "520e6431b7fa4ea22d6b1872" }, "a" : 3, "b" : 3, "c" : 6 }
{ "_id" : { "$oid" : "520e6445b7fa4ea22d6b1873" }, "a" : 5, "b" : 6, "c" : 8 }

--csv

Changes the export format to a comma separated values (CSV) format. By default mongoexport writes data using one JSON document for every MongoDB document.

If you specify --csv, then you must also use either the --fields or the --fieldFile option to declare the fields to export from the collection.

--jsonArray

Modifies the output of mongoexport to write the entire contents of the export as a single JSON array. By default mongoexport writes data using one JSON document for every MongoDB document.

--slaveOk, -k

Allows mongoexport to read data from secondary or slave nodes when using mongoexport with a replica set. This option is only available if connected to a mongod or mongos and is not available when used with the “mongoexport --dbpath” option.

This is the default behavior.

--out <file>, -o <file>

Specify a file to write the export to. If you do not specify a file name, the mongoexport writes data to standard output (e.g. stdout).

--forceTableScan

New in version 2.2.

Forces mongoexport to scan the data store directly instead of traversing the _id field index. Use --forceTableScan to skip the index. Typically there are two cases where this behavior is preferable to the default:

1. If you have key sizes over 800 bytes that would not be present in the _id index.
2. Your database uses a custom _id field.

When you run with --forceTableScan, mongoexport may return a document more than once if a write operation interleaves with the operation to cause the document to move.

Warning

Use --forceTableScan with extreme caution and consideration.

Usage

In the following example, mongoexport exports the collection contacts from the users database from the mongod instance running on the localhost port number 27017. This command writes the export data in CSV format into a file located at /opt/backups/contacts.csv. The fields.txt file contains a line-separated list of fields to export.

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mongoexport --db users --collection contacts --csv --fieldFile fields.txt --out /opt/backups/contacts.csv

The next example creates an export of the collection contacts from the MongoDB instance running on the localhost port number 27017, with journaling explicitly enabled. This writes the export to the contacts.json file in JSON format.

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mongoexport --db sales --collection contacts --out contacts.json --journal

The following example exports the collection contacts from the sales database located in the MongoDB data files located at /srv/mongodb/. This operation writes the export to standard output in JSON format.

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mongoexport --db sales --collection contacts --dbpath /srv/mongodb/

Warning

The above example will only succeed if there is no mongod connected to the data files located in the /srv/mongodb/ directory.

The final example exports the collection contacts from the database marketing . This data resides on the MongoDB instance located on the host mongodb1.example.net running on port 37017, which requires the username user and the password pass.

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mongoexport --host mongodb1.example.net --port 37017 --username user --password pass --collection contacts --db marketing --out mdb1-examplenet.json

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