Single Field Indexes
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Single field indexes store information from a single field in a collection. By default, all collections have an index on the _id field. You can add additional indexes to speed up important queries and operations.
You can create a single-field index on any field in a document, including:
Top-level document fields
Embedded documents
Fields within embedded documents
When you create an index, you specify:
The field on which to create the index.
The sort order for the indexed values (ascending or descending).
A sort order of
1sorts values in ascending order.A sort order of
-1sorts values in descending order.
To create a single-field index, use the following prototype:
db.<collection>.createIndex( { <field>: <sortOrder> } )
This image shows an ascending index on a single field, score:
In this example, each document in the collection that has a value for
the score field is added to the index in ascending order.
Compatibility
You can use single field indexes for 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
To learn more about managing indexes for deployments hosted in MongoDB Atlas, see Create, View, Drop, and Hide Indexes.
Use Cases
If your application repeatedly runs queries on the same field, you can create an index on that field to improve performance. For example, your human resources department often needs to look up employees by employee ID. You can create an index on the employee ID field to improve the performance of that query.
Indexing commonly queried fields increases the chances of covering those queries. Covered queries are queries that can be satisfied entirely using an index, without examining any documents. This optimizes query performance.
Get Started
To create an index on a single field, see these examples:
Details
For a single-field index, the sort order (ascending or descending) of the index key does not matter because MongoDB can traverse the index in either direction.