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Delete Documents

Overview

In this guide, you can learn how to remove documents from your MongoDB collections using delete operations.

This guide includes the following sections:

Sample Data for Examples presents the sample data that is used by the delete operation example
Delete Operations describes how to use the driver to execute delete operations
Additional Information provides links to resources and API documentation for types and methods mentioned in this guide

Sample Data for Examples

The example in this guide uses the following sample documents. Each document represents an item in a store's inventory and contains information about its categorization and unit price:

{ "item": "trowel", "category": "garden", "unit_price": 9.89 },
{ "item": "placemat", "category": "kitchen", "unit_price": 3.19 },
{ "item": "watering can", "category": "garden", "unit_price": 11.99 }

Delete Operations

The Rust driver provides the delete_one() and delete_many() methods to perform delete operations.

Parameters

The delete_one() and delete_many() methods take a query filter as a parameter. A query filter consists of the fields and values that form criteria for documents to match.

You can also optionally pass a DeleteOptions type as a parameter to either method. You can specify settings in a DeleteOptions instance to configure the delete operation. To use default values for each setting, specify the value None as the options parameter.

Note

Instantiating Options

The Rust driver implements the Builder design pattern for the creation of many different types, including DeleteOptions. You can use each type's builder() method to construct an options instance by chaining option builder functions one at a time.

The following table describes settings that you can specify in a DeleteOptions instance:

Option	Description
`collation`	The collation to use when sorting results. To learn more about collations, see the Collations guide. Type: `Collation` Default: `None`
`write_concern`	The write concern for the operation. If you don't set this option, the operation inherits the write concern set for the collection. To learn more about write concerns, see Write Concern in the Server manual. Type: `WriteConcern`
`hint`	The index to use for the operation. To learn more about indexes, see Indexes in the Server manual. This option is available only when connecting to MongoDB Server versions 4.4 and later. Type: `Hint` Default: `None`
`let_vars`	A map of parameters and values. These parameters can be accessed as variables in aggregation expressions. This option is available only when connecting to MongoDB Server versions 5.0 and later. Type: `Document`
`comment`	An arbitrary `Bson` value tied to the operation to trace it through the database profiler, `currentOp`, and logs. This option is available only when connecting to MongoDB Server versions 4.4 and later. Type: `Bson` Default: `None`

The following code shows how to construct an DeleteOptions instance and pass it to the delete_one() method:

let opts: DeleteOptions = DeleteOptions::builder().comment(bson!("hello!")).build();
let res = my_coll.delete_one(filter, opts).await?;

Return Value

The delete_one() and delete_many() methods return a DeleteResult type. This type contains the deleted_count property, which describes the number of documents deleted. If no documents match the query filter you specified, the delete operation does not remove any documents, and the value of deleted_count is 0.

delete_many() Example

This example shows how to call the delete_many() method with the following parameters:

A query filter that matches documents where the value of category is "garden"
A DeleteOptions instance that uses the _id_ index as the hint for the delete operation

let filter = doc! { "category": "garden" };
let hint = Hint::Name("_id_".to_string());
let opts: DeleteOptions = DeleteOptions::builder().hint(hint).build();
let res = my_coll.delete_many(filter, opts).await?;
println!("Deleted documents: {}", res.deleted_count);

Deleted documents: 2

Note

If you use the delete_one() method instead of delete_many() in the preceding code example, the driver deletes only the first of the two documents that match the query filter.

Additional Information

For runnable examples of the delete operations, see the following usage examples:

To learn more about the operations in this guide, see the following documentation:

Specify a Query guide
Collations guide

API Documentation

To learn more about the methods and types mentioned in this guide, see the following API documentation:

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Bulk Operations