Delete Multiple Documents

You can delete multiple documents from a collection in a single operation by calling the deleteMany() method on a MongoCollection object.

To specify which documents to delete, pass a query filter that matches the documents you want to delete. If you provide an empty document, MongoDB matches all documents in the collection and deletes them. While you can use deleteMany() to delete all documents in a collection, consider using the drop() method instead for better performance.

Upon successful deletion, this method returns an instance of DeleteResult. You can retrieve information such as the number of documents deleted by calling the getDeletedCount() method on the DeleteResult instance.

If your delete operation fails, the driver raises an exception. For more information on the types of exceptions raised under specific conditions, see the API documentation for deleteMany(), linked at the bottom of this page.

Example

The following snippet deletes multiple documents from the movies collection in the sample_mflix database.

The query filter passed to the deleteMany() method matches all movie documents that contain a rating of less than 1.9 in the imdb subdocument.

Note

This example connects to an instance of MongoDB using a connection URI. To learn more about connecting to your MongoDB instance, see the connection guide.

// Deletes multiple documents from a collection by using the Java driver
package usage.examples;
import static com.mongodb.client.model.Filters.lt;
import org.bson.Document;
import org.bson.conversions.Bson;
import com.mongodb.MongoException;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoClient;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoClients;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoCollection;
import com.mongodb.client.MongoDatabase;
import com.mongodb.client.result.DeleteResult;
public class DeleteMany {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Replace the uri string with your MongoDB deployment's connection string
        String uri = "<connection string uri>";
        try (MongoClient mongoClient = MongoClients.create(uri)) {
            MongoDatabase database = mongoClient.getDatabase("sample_mflix");
            MongoCollection<Document> collection = database.getCollection("movies");
            Bson query = lt("imdb.rating", 1.9);
            try {
                // Deletes all documents that have an "imdb.rating" value less than 1.9
                DeleteResult result = collection.deleteMany(query);
                
                // Prints the number of deleted documents
                System.out.println("Deleted document count: " + result.getDeletedCount());
            
            // Prints a message if any exceptions occur during the operation
            } catch (MongoException me) {
                System.err.println("Unable to delete due to an error: " + me);
            }
        }
    }
}

When you run the example, you should see output that reports the number of documents deleted in your call to deleteMany().

Deleted document count: 4

Tip

Legacy API

If you are using the legacy API, see our FAQ page to learn what changes you need to make to this code example.

For additional information on the classes and methods mentioned on this page, see the following API Documentation:

Back

Delete a Document

Perform Bulk Operations