cursor.returnKey()

Definition

cursor.returnKey()

Important

mongosh Method

This is a mongosh method. This is not the documentation for Node.js or other programming language specific driver methods.

In most cases, mongosh methods work the same way as the legacy mongo shell methods. However, some legacy methods are unavailable in mongosh.

For the legacy mongo shell documentation, refer to the documentation for the corresponding MongoDB Server release:

• mongo shell v4.4

• mongo shell v4.2

• mongo shell v4.0

For MongoDB API drivers, refer to the language specific MongoDB driver documentation.

Tip

$meta supports the keyword "indexKey" to return index key metadata if an index is used. The use of { $meta: "indexKey" } is preferred over cursor.returnKey().

Modifies the cursor to return index keys rather than the documents.

The cursor.returnKey() has the following form:

cursor.returnKey()

Returns:	The cursor that returnKey() is attached to with a modified result set. This allows for additional cursor modifiers to be chained.

Compatibility

This method is available in 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

Behavior

If the query does not use an index to perform the read operation, the cursor returns empty documents.

Example

The restaurants collection contains documents with the following schema:

{
   "_id" : ObjectId("564f3a35b385149fc7e3fab9"),
   "address" : {
      "building" : "2780",
      "coord" : [
         -73.98241999999999,
         40.579505
      ],
      "street" : "Stillwell Avenue",
      "zipcode" : "11224"
   },
   "borough" : "Brooklyn",
   "cuisine" : "American ",
   "grades" : [
      {
         "date" : ISODate("2014-06-10T00:00:00Z"),
         "grade" : "A",
         "score" : 5
      },
      {
         "date" : ISODate("2013-06-05T00:00:00Z"),
         "grade" : "A",
         "score" : 7
      }
   ],
   "name" : "Riviera Caterer",
   "restaurant_id" : "40356018"
}

The collection has two indexes in addition to the default _id index:

{
   "v" : 1,
   "key" : {
      "_id" : 1
   },
   "name" : "_id_",
   "ns" : "guidebook.restaurant"
},
{
   "v" : 1,
   "key" : {
      "cuisine" : 1
   },
   "name" : "cuisine_1",
   "ns" : "guidebook.restaurant"
},
{
   "v" : 1,
   "key" : {
      "_fts" : "text",
      "_ftsx" : 1
   },
   "name" : "name_text",
   "ns" : "guidebook.restaurant",
   "weights" : {
      "name" : 1
   },
   "default_language" : "english",
   "language_override" : "language",
   "textIndexVersion" : 3
}

The following code uses the cursor.returnKey() method to return only the indexed fields used for executing the query:

var csr = db.restaurant.find( { "cuisine" : "Japanese" } )
csr.returnKey()

This returns the following:

{ "cuisine" : "Japanese" }
{ "cuisine" : "Japanese" }
{ "cuisine" : "Japanese" }
{ "cuisine" : "Japanese" }
...