Change a Document
Overview
You can change documents in a MongoDB collection using two distinct operation types: update and replace. Update operations mutate specified fields in one or more documents and leave other fields and values unchanged. Replace operations remove all existing fields in one or more documents and substitute them with specified fields and values.
Update
To perform an update to one or more documents, create an update document that specifies the update operator (the type of update to perform) and the fields and values that describe the change. Update documents use the following format:
{ <update operator>: { <field> : { ... }, <field> : { } }, <update operator>: { ... } }
The top level of an update document contains one or more of the following update operators:
$set- replaces the value of a field with a specified one$inc- increments or decrements field values$rename- renames fields$unset- removes fields$mul- multiplies a field value by a specified number
See the MongoDB server manual for a complete list of update operators and their usage.
The update operators apply only to the fields associated with them in your update document.
If you are using MongoDB Version 4.2 or later, you can use aggregation pipelines made up of a subset of aggregation stages in update operations. For more information on the aggregation stages MongoDB supports in aggregation pipelines used in update operations, see our tutorial on building updates with aggregation pipelines.
Example
Consider a document of fields containing the English alphabet of lowercase
letters a through z and their ordinal values:
{ _id: 465, a: 1, b: 2, c: 3, ... y: 25, z: 26, }
If you apply the $set update operator with a specified value for z,
your update operation might resemble the following:
const filter = { _id: 465 }; // update the value of the 'z' field to 42 const updateDocument = { $set: { z: 42, }, }; const result = await collection.updateOne(filter, updateDocument);
The updated document resembles the following, with an an updated value in
the z field and all other values unchanged:
{ _id: 465, a: 1, ... y: 25, z: 42, }
If an update operation fails to match any documents in a collection, it does not make any changes. Update operations can be configured to perform an upsert which attempts to perform an update, but if no documents are matched, inserts a new document.
You cannot modify the _id field of a document nor change a field to
a value that violates a unique index constraint. See the MongoDB server manual
for more information on unique indexes.
Replace
To perform a replacement operation, create a replacement document that consists of the fields and values that you would like to insert in your replace operation. Replacement documents use the following format:
{ <field>: { <value> }, <field>: { ... } }
Replacement documents are the documents that you want to take the place of existing documents that match the query filters.
Example
Consider a document of fields containing the English alphabet of lowercase
letters a through z and their ordinal values:
{ _id: 465, a: 1, b: 2, c: 3, ... y: 25, z: 26, }
Suppose you wanted to replace this document with one that contains only
the field z with a value of 42. Your replacement operation might
resemble the following:
const filter = { _id: 465 }; // replace the matched document with the replacement document const replacementDocument = { z: 42, }; const result = await collection.replaceOne(filter, replacementDocument);
The replaced document contains the contents of the replacement document
and the immutable _id field as follows:
{ _id: 465, z: 42, }
If a replace operation fails to match any documents in a collection, it does not make any changes. Replace operations can be configured to perform an upsert which attempts to perform the replacement, but if no documents are matched, it inserts a new document.
You cannot modify the _id field of a document nor change a field to
a value that violates a unique index constraint. See the MongoDB server manual
for more information on unique indexes.