Create, View, Drop, and Shard Collections
You can use the Atlas UI to manage the collections in your clusters.
Required Roles
The following table describes the roles required to perform various actions to a database in the Atlas UI:
Action | Required Roles |
|---|---|
Create Collections | One of the following roles: |
View Collections | At least the |
Drop Collections | One of the following roles: |
Shard Collections | One of the following roles: |
Create a Collection
Tip
To create the first collection in a new database, see Create a Database.
Important
You cannot create new collections on the config and
system databases. Atlas will deprecate writing to existing
collections on these databases in the near future.
To create a collection in an existing database through the Atlas UI:
In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.
If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.
The Clusters page displays.
Go to the Collections page.
Click the Browse Collections button for your cluster.
The Data Explorer displays.
Enter the Collection Name.
Important
Don't include sensitive information in your collection name.
For more information on MongoDB collection names, see Naming Restrictions.
Optional. Specify a capped collection.
Select whether the collection is a capped collection. If you select to create a capped collection, specify the maximum size in bytes.
Optional. Specify a time series collection.
Select whether the collection is a time series collection. If you select to create a time series collection, specify the time field and granularity. You can optionally specify the meta field and the time for old data in the collection to expire.
View Collections
To view the databases and collections in the deployment:
In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.
If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.
The Clusters page displays.
Go to the Collections page.
Click the Browse Collections button for your cluster.
The Data Explorer displays.
View the collections in a database.
Click on the name of the database.
Note
Atlas bases the document count that appears on this tab on cached metadata using collStats. This count might differ from the actual document count in the collection. For example, an unexpected shutdown can throw off the count. Use the db.collection.countDocuments() method for the most accurate document count.
Visualize Collection Data
To launch MongoDB Charts to visualize data in your databases and collections.
In Atlas, go to the Clusters page for your project.
If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your desired project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, select your desired project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.
If it's not already displayed, click Clusters in the sidebar.
The Clusters page displays.
Go to the Collections page.
Click the Browse Collections button for your cluster.
The Data Explorer displays.
Launch MongoDB Charts.
To visualize data in MongoDB Charts from the Atlas UI, click Visualize Your Data when viewing a specific database or collection. Charts loads the data source and you can start building a chart in the Charts view. For detailed steps, see Build Charts.
Drop a Collection
To drop a collection, including its documents and indexes, through the Atlas UI:
Shard a Collection
If you have large data sets and perform high throughput operations, you can shard a collection to distribute data across the shards.
Note
To shard a collection through the Atlas UI:
Connect to MongoDB from mongosh.
Enable sharding for the databases you want to shard.
To enable sharding, run the following command:
sh.enableSharding("<database-name>")
Example
To enable sharding for the sample_analytics dataset:
sh.enableSharding("sample_analytics")
To learn more, see Enable Sharding for a Database in the MongoDB manual.
Optional: Create an index on the shard key if the collection that you wish to shard has data and is not empty.
To create an index on the shard key, run the following command:
db.<collection-name>.createIndex({<shard_key_definition>})
Example
To create an index on the shard key for the
sample_analytics.customers collection:
db.sample_analytics.runCommand( { createIndexes: "customers", indexes: [ { key: { "username": 1 }, "name": "usernameIndex" }], "commitQuorum": "majority" } )
To learn more, see:
Shard the collection that you want to shard.
To shard a collection, run the following command:
sh.shardCollection("<database>.<collection>", { "<indexed-field>" : 1 } )
Example
To shard the sample_analytics.customers collection:
sh.shardCollection("sample_analytics.customers",{"username":1})
Warning
If you shard a collection that already has an Atlas Search index, you might experience a brief period of query downtime when the collection begins to appear on a shard. Also, if you add a shard for an already sharded collection that contains an Atlas Search index, your search queries against that collection will fail until the initial sync process completes on the added shards. To learn more, see initial sync process.
To learn more, see Shard a Collection in the MongoDB manual.