ULTIMATE
MONGODB
CHEATSHEET
INTUITION
KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SQL AND NOSQL
SQL NOSQL
Documents, Key-Value pairs,
Table Based
Graph-based, or Wide Column Stores
Defined Schema Undefined / Flexible Schema
Better for Complex Queries Better for Complex Data Structures
Better for Transactional Systems Better for Horizontal Scaling
Examples: MySQL, Postgres, Examples: MongoDB, Cassandra, HBase,
Oracle, SQLite Redis, Neo4j
CRUD OPERATIONS
Create: Insert one or more records into the database
Read: Pull one or more records from the database
Update: Modify one or more existing records in the database
Delete: Remove one or more records from the database
PRIMARY KEYS
Always unique for each document in a collection
Cannot have null or missing values
In MongoDB, this is the “_id” key and is added to every document by default:
"_id" : ObjectId("5c92eca2cc7efa53af5dae22")
RELATIONSHIPS IN DATA
In MongoDB, you can establish relationships in two primary ways:
Using a key in one document or collection that corresponds to a key in another
1 (user_id in the images).
User:
{
"_id" : ObjectId("5c943413cc7efa53af5dae24"),
"user_id" : 3173,
"name" : "helen",
"age" : 32
}
Blog Post:
{
"_id" : ObjectId("5c943545cc7efa53af5dae25"),
"post_id" : 5186,
"user_id" : 3173,
"body" : "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet",
"topic" : "health and wellness",
"likes" : 57,
"dislikes" : 31
}
2 Embedded documents: Storing an entire document inside of another
User document with blog posts embedded:
{
"_id" : ObjectId("5c943654cc7efa53af5dae26"),
"user_id" : 3173,
"name" : "helen",
"age" : 32,
"posts" : [
{
"body" : "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet",
"topic" : "health and wellness",
"likes" : 57,
"dislikes" : 31
}
]
}
GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR STRUCTURING YOUR DATABASE
Remember: MongoDB has a flexible schema, so you can change the the structure of your
data as needed after creating your database.
One structure might be better for a certain situation than another.
In general, for each situation in which you’re reading data from your database, your goals
should be to:
Minimize the amount of data that is loaded unnecessarily
Access all of the data you need in one single query.
These goals often conflict with each other! It’s difficult to perfectly achieve both of them,
but it’s helpful to try to get as close as we can.
2 PRACTICAL
STARTING UP THE MONGO SHELL
In one terminal window, type mongod and hit enter. This will start your MongoDB server.
*Note: You will also need to have a MongoDB server running to use MongoDB Com-
pass.
Open up another terminal, type mongo and hit enter
You should now have a running MongoDB shell!
GETTING STARTED WITH THE SHELL
To see what databases already exist, type show dbs in the command prompt and hit
enter.
You can create a new database or switch to an existing database with the same com-
mand! Type use database-name and hit enter
Replace “database-name” with the actual name of the database.
Once you’re using a database, type show collections and hit enter to see what collec-
tions you have.
To start working with data in a collection you can use the CRUD operations shown below!
CRUD OPERATIONS IN THE MONGO SHELL
Create: Inserts a document with a name of patrick
db.collection.insert({“name”: “patrick”})
Read: Finds all documents with an age of 42
db.collection.find({“age”: 42})
Update: Replaces the first document found with a country of “US” with a new docu-
ment, containing only a country of “USA”
db.collection.update({“country”: “US”}, {“country”: “USA”})
Delete: Removes all documents with a user_id of 4106
db.collection.remove({“user_id”: 4106})
DIFFERENT QUERIES FOR DATA ANALYSIS
Returns all posts where the topic is not equal to sports
{“topic”: {$ne: “sports”}}
Returns all posts with more than 36 likes
{“likes”: {$gt: 36}}
Returns all posts with less than 52 dislikes
{“dislikes”: {$lt: 36}}
Returns all posts where the topic is null
{“topic”: null}
Returns all posts where the topic is either fitness or cooking
{“topic”: {$in: [“fitness”, “cooking”]}}
You can also combine several queries with $and and $or!
Returns all posts with less than 43 likes and more than 25 dislikes
{$and: [{"likes": {$lt: 43}}, {"dislikes": {$gt: 25}}]}
Returns all posts with less than than 34 dislikes or where the topic is not equal to cooking
{$or: [{"dislikes": {$lt: 34}}, {"topic": {$ne: "cooking"}}]}
