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create

On this page

  • Definition
  • Compatibility
  • Syntax
  • Behavior
  • Access Control
  • Examples

Definition

create

Explicitly creates a collection or view.

Note

The view created by this command does not refer to materialized views. For discussion of on-demand materialized views, see $merge instead.

Compatibility

This command is available in deployments hosted in the following environments:

  • MongoDB Atlas: The fully managed service for MongoDB deployments in the cloud

Note

This command is supported in all MongoDB Atlas clusters. For information on Atlas support for all commands, see Unsupported Commands.

Syntax

The create command has the following syntax:

Note

MongoDB 6.3 adds the bucketMaxSpanSeconds and bucketRoundingSeconds parameters. To downgrade below 6.3, you must either drop all collections with these parameters, or modify them to use the corresponding granularity, if possible. For details see collMod.

{
   create: <collection or view name>,
   capped: <true|false>,
   timeseries: {
      timeField: <string>,
      metaField: <string>,
      granularity: <string>
   },
   expireAfterSeconds: <number>,
   autoIndexId: <true|false>,
   size: <max_size>,
   max: <max_documents>,
   storageEngine: <document>,
   validator: <document>,
   validationLevel: <string>,
   validationAction: <string>,
   indexOptionDefaults: <document>,
   viewOn: <source>,
   pipeline: <pipeline>,
   collation: <document>,
   writeConcern: <document>,
   comment: <any>
}

Command Fields

The create command has the following fields:

Field
Type
Description
create
string
The name of the new collection or view. See Naming Restrictions.
capped
boolean
Optional. To create a capped collection, specify true. If you specify true, you must also set a maximum size in the size field.
timeseries.timeField
string
Required when creating a time series collection. The name of the field which contains the date in each time series document. Documents in a time series collection must have a valid BSON date as the value for the timeField.
timeseries.metaField
string

Optional. The name of the field which contains metadata in each time series document. The metadata in the specified field should be data that is used to label a unique series of documents. The metadata should rarely, if ever, change.

The name of the specified field may not be _id or the same as the timeseries.timeField. The field can be of any type except array.

timeseries.granularity
string
Optional. Possible values are "seconds" (default), "minutes", and "hours". Set the granularity to the value that is the closest match to the time span between consecutive incoming measurements. Setting the granularity parameter accurately improves performance by optimizing how data in the time series collection is stored internally.
expireAfterSeconds
number
Optional. Enable the automatic deletion of documents in a time series collection by specifying the number of seconds after which documents expire. MongoDB deletes expired documents automatically.
autoIndexId
boolean

Optional. Specify false to disable the automatic creation of an index on the _id field.

Important

Starting in MongoDB 4.0, you cannot set the option autoIndexId to false when creating collections in databases other than the local database.

Deprecated since version 3.2.

size
integer
Optional. Specify a maximum size in bytes for a capped collection. Once a capped collection reaches its maximum size, MongoDB removes the older documents to make space for the new documents. The size field is required for capped collections and ignored for other collections.
max
integer
Optional. The maximum number of documents allowed in the capped collection. The size limit takes precedence over this limit. If a capped collection reaches the size limit before it reaches the maximum number of documents, MongoDB removes old documents. If you prefer to use the max limit, ensure that the size limit, which is required for a capped collection, is sufficient to contain the maximum number of documents.
storageEngine
document

Optional. Available for the WiredTiger storage engine only.

Allows users to specify configuration to the storage engine on a per-collection basis when creating a collection. The value of the storageEngine option should take the following form:

{ <storage-engine-name>: <options> }

Storage engine configuration specified when creating collections are validated and logged to the oplog during replication to support replica sets with members that use different storage engines.

For more information, see Specify Storage Engine Options.

validator
document

Optional. Allows users to specify validation rules or expressions for the collection. For more information, see Schema Validation.

New in version 3.2.

The validator option takes a document that specifies the validation rules or expressions. You can specify the expressions using the same operators as the query operators with the exception of $near, $nearSphere, $text, and $where.

  • Validation occurs during updates and inserts. Existing documents do not undergo validation checks until modification.

  • You cannot specify a validator for collections in the admin, local, and config databases.

  • You cannot specify a validator for system.* collections.

validationLevel
string

Optional. Determines how strictly MongoDB applies the validation rules to existing documents during an update.

New in version 3.2.

"off"
No validation for inserts or updates.
"strict"
Default Apply validation rules to all inserts and all updates.
"moderate"
Apply validation rules to inserts and to updates on existing valid documents. Do not apply rules to updates on existing invalid documents.
validationAction
string

Optional. Determines whether to error on invalid documents or just warn about the violations but allow invalid documents to be inserted.

Validation of documents only applies to those documents as determined by the validationLevel.

"error"
Default Documents must pass validation before the write occurs. Otherwise, the write operation fails.
"warn"
Documents do not have to pass validation. If the document fails validation, the write operation logs the validation failure.
indexOptionDefaults
document

Optional. Allows users to specify a default configuration for indexes when creating a collection.

The indexOptionDefaults option accepts a storageEngine document, which should take the following form:

{ <storage-engine-name>: <options> }

Storage engine configuration specified when creating indexes are validated and logged to the oplog during replication to support replica sets with members that use different storage engines.

New in version 3.2.

viewOn
string

The name of the source collection or view from which to create the view. The name is not the full namespace of the collection or view; i.e. does not include the database name and implies the same database as the view to create. You must create views in the same database as the source collection.

See also db.createView().

New in version 3.4.

pipeline
array

An array that consists of the aggregation pipeline stage(s). create creates the view by applying the specified pipeline to the viewOn collection or view.

The view definition pipeline cannot include the $out or the $merge stage. If the view definition includes nested pipeline (e.g. the view definition includes $lookup or $facet stage), this restriction applies to the nested pipelines as well.

The view definition is public; i.e. db.getCollectionInfos() and explain operations on the view will include the pipeline that defines the view. As such, avoid referring directly to sensitive fields and values in view definitions.

See also db.createView().

collation

Specifies the default collation for the collection or the view.

Collation allows users to specify language-specific rules for string comparison, such as rules for lettercase and accent marks.

The collation option has the following syntax:

collation: {
   locale: <string>,
   caseLevel: <boolean>,
   caseFirst: <string>,
   strength: <int>,
   numericOrdering: <boolean>,
   alternate: <string>,
   maxVariable: <string>,
   backwards: <boolean>
}

When specifying collation, the locale field is mandatory; all other collation fields are optional. For descriptions of the fields, see Collation Document.

If you specify a collation at the collection level:

  • Indexes on that collection will be created with that collation unless the index creation operation explicitly specify a different collation.

  • Operations on that collection use the collection's default collation unless they explicitly specify a different collation.

    You cannot specify multiple collations for an operation. For example, you cannot specify different collations per field, or if performing a find with a sort, you cannot use one collation for the find and another for the sort.

If no collation is specified for the collection or for the operations, MongoDB uses the simple binary comparison used in prior versions for string comparisons.

For a view, if no collation is specified, the view's default collation is the "simple" binary comparison collator. For a view on a collection, the view does not inherit the collection's collation settings. For a view on another view, the to be created view must specify the same collation settings.

After you create the collection or the view, you cannot update its default collation.

For an example that specifies the default collation during the creation of a collection, see Specify Collation.

New in version 3.4.

writeConcern
document

Optional. A document that expresses the write concern for the operation. Omit to use the default write concern.

When issued on a sharded cluster, mongos converts the write concern of the create command and its helper db.createCollection() to "majority".

comment
any

Optional. A user-provided comment to attach to this command. Once set, this comment appears alongside records of this command in the following locations:

A comment can be any valid BSON type (string, integer, object, array, etc).

New in version 4.4.

The db.createCollection() method and the db.createView() method wrap the create command.

Behavior

Resource Locking

Changed in version 4.2.

create obtains an exclusive lock on the specified collection or view for the duration of the operation. All subsequent operations on the collection must wait until create releases the lock. create typically holds this lock for a short time.

Creating a view requires obtaining an additional exclusive lock on the system.views collection in the database. This lock blocks creation or modification of views in the database until the command completes.

Prior to MongoDB 4.2, create obtained an exclusive lock on the parent database, blocking all operations on the database and all its collections until the operation completed.

Transactions

Changed in version 4.4.

You can create collections and indexes inside a distributed transaction if the transaction is not a cross-shard write transaction.

To use create in a transaction, the transaction must use read concern "local". If you specify a read concern level other than "local", the transaction fails.

Tip

See also:

Create Collections and Indexes in a Transaction

Stable API

Changed in version 5.0.

When using Stable API V1, you cannot specify the following fields in a create command:

  • autoIndexId

  • capped

  • indexOptionDefaults

  • max

  • size

  • storageEngine

Access Control

If the deployment enforces authentication/authorization, create requires the following privileges:

Task
Required Privileges
Create a non-capped collection

createCollection on the database, or

insert on the collection to create

convertToCapped for the collection

createCollection on the database

Create a view

createCollection on the database.

However, if the user has the createCollection on the database and find on the view to create, the user must also have the following additional permissions:

  • find on the source collection or view.

  • find on any other collections or views referenced in the pipeline, if any.

A user with the readWrite built in role on the database has the required privileges to run the listed operations. Either create a user with the required role or grant the role to an existing user.

Examples

Create a Capped Collection

To create a capped collection limited to 64 kilobytes, issue the command in the following form:

db.runCommand( { create: "collection", capped: true, size: 64 * 1024 } )

Create a Time Series Collection

To create a time series collection that captures weather data for the past 24 hours, issue this command:

db.createCollection(
    "weather24h",
    {
       timeseries: {
          timeField: "timestamp",
          metaField: "data",
          granularity: "hours"
       },
       expireAfterSeconds: 86400
    }
)

Note

In this example expireAfterSeconds is specified as 86400 which means documents expire 86400 seconds after the timestamp value. See Set up Automatic Removal for Time Series Collections (TTL).

Create a View

Note

The view created by this command does not refer to materialized views. For discussion of on-demand materialized views, see $merge instead.

Changed in version 4.2.

The view definition pipeline cannot include the $out or the $merge stage. If the view definition includes nested pipeline (e.g. the view definition includes $lookup or $facet stage), this restriction applies to the nested pipelines as well.

To create a view using the create command, use the following syntax:

db.runCommand( { create: <view>, viewOn: <source>, pipeline: <pipeline> } )

or if specifying a collation:

db.runCommand( { create: <view>, viewOn: <source>, pipeline: <pipeline>, collation: <collation> } )

For example, create a survey collection with the following documents:

db.survey.insertMany(
   [
      { _id: 1, empNumber: "abc123", feedback: { management: 3, environment: 3 }, department: "A" },
      { _id: 2, empNumber: "xyz987", feedback: { management: 2, environment: 3 }, department: "B" },
      { _id: 3, empNumber: "ijk555", feedback: { management: 3, environment: 4 }, department: "A" }
   ]
)

The following operation creates a managementRatings view with the _id, feedback.management, and department fields:

db.runCommand ( {
   create: "managementFeedback",
   viewOn: "survey",
   pipeline: [ { $project: { "management": "$feedback.management", department: 1 } } ]
} )

Important

The view definition is public; i.e. db.getCollectionInfos() and explain operations on the view will include the pipeline that defines the view. As such, avoid referring directly to sensitive fields and values in view definitions.

Tip

See also:

db.createView()

Specify Collation

You can specify collation at the collection or view level. For example, the following operation creates a collection, specifying a collation for the collection (See Collation Document for descriptions of the collation fields):

db.runCommand ( {
   create: "myColl",
   collation: { locale: "fr" }
});

This collation will be used by indexes and operations that support collation unless they explicitly specify a different collation. For example, insert the following documents into myColl:

{ _id: 1, category: "café" }
{ _id: 2, category: "cafe" }
{ _id: 3, category: "cafE" }

The following operation uses the collection's collation:

db.myColl.find().sort( { category: 1 } )

The operation returns documents in the following order:

{ "_id" : 2, "category" : "cafe" }
{ "_id" : 3, "category" : "cafE" }
{ "_id" : 1, "category" : "café" }

The same operation on a collection that uses simple binary collation (i.e. no specific collation set) returns documents in the following order:

{ "_id" : 3, "category" : "cafE" }
{ "_id" : 2, "category" : "cafe" }
{ "_id" : 1, "category" : "café" }

Tip

See also:

Specify Storage Engine Options

You can specify collection-specific storage engine configuration options when you create a collection with db.createCollection(). Consider the following operation:

db.runCommand( {
    create: "users",
    storageEngine: { wiredTiger: { configString: "<option>=<setting>" } }
} )

This operation creates a new collection named users with a specific configuration string that MongoDB will pass to the wiredTiger storage engine. See the WiredTiger documentation of collection level options for specific wiredTiger options.

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createIndexes