Mongo.startSession()

Definition

Mongo.startSession(<options>)

Starts a session for the connection. mongosh assigns the session ID to commands associated with the session.

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 startSession command.

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

A session can only be used with the MongoClient object that created the session. A single session cannot be used concurrently. Operations that use a single session must be run sequentially.

The startSession() method can take a document with session options. The options available are:

Field	Description
causalConsistency	Boolean. Enables or disables causal consistency for the session. Mongo.startSession() enables causalConsistency by default. Mutually exclusive with snapshot. After starting a session, you cannot modify its causalConsistency setting. The session may have causal consistency enabled even though the Mongo() connection object may have causal consistency disabled or vice versa. To set causal consistency on the connection object, see Mongo.setCausalConsistency().
readConcern	Document. Specifies the read concern. To modify the setting after starting a session, see Session.getOptions().setReadConcern().
readPreference	Document. Specifies the read preference. The readPreference document contains the mode field and the optional tags field: { mode: <string>, tags: <array> } To modify the setting after starting a session, see Session.getOptions().setReadPreference().
retryWrites	Boolean. Enables or disables the ability to retry writes upon encountering transient network errors. If you start mongosh with the --retryWrites option, retryWrites is enabled by default for Mongo.startSession(). After starting a session, you cannot modify its retryWrites setting.
snapshot	Boolean. Enables snapshot reads for the session for MongoDB 5.0+ deployments. Mutually exclusive with causalConsistency.
writeConcern	Document. Specifies the write concern. To modify the setting after starting a session, see Session.getOptions().setWriteConcern().

Compatibility

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

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

• MongoDB Enterprise: The subscription-based, self-managed version of MongoDB

• MongoDB Community: The source-available, free-to-use, and self-managed version of MongoDB

Examples

The following starts a session with causal consistency and retryable writes enabled on the Mongo() connection object associated with mongosh's global db variable:

db = db.getMongo().startSession({retryWrites: true, causalConsistency: true}).getDatabase(db.getName());