Docs Menu
Docs Home
/
MongoDB Manual
/ / /

db.collection.renameCollection()

On this page

  • Definition
  • Behavior
  • Example
db.collection.renameCollection(target, dropTarget)

Important

mongosh Method

This page documents a mongosh method. This is not the documentation for database commands or language-specific drivers, such as Node.js.

For the database command, see the renameCollection command.

For MongoDB API drivers, refer to the language-specific MongoDB driver documentation.

For the legacy mongo shell documentation, refer to the documentation for the corresponding MongoDB Server release:

mongo shell v4.4

Renames a collection. Provides a wrapper for the renameCollection database command.

Parameter
Type
Description
target
string
The new name of the collection. Enclose the string in quotes. See Naming Restrictions.
dropTarget
boolean
Optional. If true, mongod drops the target of renameCollection prior to renaming the collection. The default value is false.

The db.collection.renameCollection() method operates within a collection by changing the metadata associated with a given collection.

Refer to the documentation renameCollection for additional warnings and messages.

Warning

The db.collection.renameCollection() method and renameCollection command will invalidate open cursors which interrupts queries that are currently returning data.

For Change Streams, the db.collection.renameCollection() method and renameCollection command create an invalidate for any existing Change Streams opened on the source or target collection.

Changed in version 5.0.

When renaming a sharded or unsharded collection in a sharded cluster, the source and target collections are exclusively locked on every shard. Subsequent operations on the source and target collections must wait until the rename operation completes.

For more information on locking in MongoDB, see FAQ: Concurrency.

Changed in version 4.2.

renameCollection() obtains an exclusive lock on the source and target collections for the duration of the operation. All subsequent operations on the collections must wait until renameCollection() completes. Prior to MongoDB 4.2, renaming a collection within the same database with renameCollection required obtaining an exclusive database lock.

A mongodump started with --oplog fails if a client issues db.collection.renameCollection() during the dump process. See mongodump.--oplog for more information.

Call the db.collection.renameCollection() method on a collection object. For example:

db.rrecord.renameCollection("record")

This operation will rename the rrecord collection to record. If the target name (i.e. record) is the name of an existing collection, then the operation will fail.

Back

db.collection.remove()