Edit documents and fields

You can change data directly from a collection tab: edit a whole document as JSON, change one value in a cell, or apply a field change to many documents at once. Every write is guarded so that you never overwrite a change you did not see, never lose a value’s type, and never write to a collection you have locked or a connection you marked read-only.

How your data is protected

Insert documents

1. In a collection tab, click Insert Document in the Result toolbar, or press Ctrl+D, or right-click > Document > Insert Document….
2. Type the document in the Insert JSON Document editor. You can type one document or an array of documents. _id is optional; when missing, an ObjectId is generated.
3. Click Validate JSON to check the text, or Format JSON to lay it out.
4. Click Add Document, or Add & Continue to insert and start another one.

The editor accepts the shell syntax the JSON View shows (ObjectId("…"), ISODate("…"), NumberLong(…), NumberDecimal(…), UUID("…"), regular expressions…) and Extended JSON. It also accepts single quotes, unquoted keys, comments and trailing commas. ObjectId(), UUID() and new Date() with no argument generate a value. Whole numbers become 32-bit or 64-bit integers depending on their size; numbers with a fraction become doubles.

View a document

Select a document and press F3 (or click View Document, or right-click > Document > View Document (JSON)…). The Document JSON Viewer shows the document as stored now, read-only, with the same text formats as the JSON View. It works on read-only connections and on views.

Edit a whole document as JSON

1. Select a document and press Ctrl+J (or click Edit Document, or right-click > Document > Edit Document (JSON)…).
2. Change the text in the Document JSON Editor. Find and Replace (Ctrl+F), Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y) are in its toolbar; Enable word wrap wraps long lines.
3. Click Validate to check the text without saving.
4. Click Update to save, or Cancel to close without writing.

If the document changed on the server since the editor opened, Update writes nothing and tells you. Click Reload to see the stored version, or Overwrite to save your text anyway, discarding the other change.

Change one value in place

1. In Table View or Tree View, double-click a cell (or select it and press F2).
2. Type the new value.
3. Press Enter to save, or Esc to cancel. Nothing is sent until you press Enter.

To change the type as well, press Ctrl+E, or right-click the value > Field > Edit Value / Type….

Field operations

Right-click a value and open the Field submenu:

On an array node in Tree View, Array Element > Add Element… adds an element.

Choose the scope

“Query criteria” is the query the tab last ran (what the page shows), not text you have typed since. Skip, limit, sort and projection do not narrow the scope.

What each operation does

• Edit Value, Always change value (“Force”) writes the value, of the chosen type, in every document of the scope.
• Edit Value, Only change type (“Convert”) converts each document’s own value to the new type. Only available with a multi-document scope. Conversions are exact or not done: a value that cannot be converted is left as it is, or replaced by the Fallback Value: if you give one. The dialog counts how many documents will be converted and how many cannot be.
• Add Field/Value adds the field only to documents that do not have it; existing values are never overwritten.
• Rename Field renames the field in documents that have it. If a document already has a field with the new name, it is overwritten, and the confirmation warns you how many documents that affects. In the current document only, renaming onto an existing field is refused instead.
• Remove Field removes the field from documents that have it.

Confirmations and results

1. Before writing to several documents, the application counts them.
2. If none would change, nothing is asked and nothing written.
3. Otherwise a confirmation names the operation, the number of documents, the scope, the collection and the server. With an “All documents in collection” scope it also warns that the whole collection is affected.
4. After the write, a message says how many documents were updated, and how many were skipped or overwritten and why. The page reloads to show the change.

Operations on the current document only do not ask: they follow the in-place rules above.

A long operation runs in the Operations panel and can be cancelled; cancelling stops it on the server, but documents already written stay written.

Update and remove by query

Both confirm before writing.

Delete documents

1. Select one or more documents.
2. Press Shift+Del, or right-click > Document > Delete Document….
3. Read the confirmation: it names how many documents, the collection and the server, and reminds you that this cannot be undone.
4. Click the confirm button, or Cancel to write nothing.

Documents whose _id is null can be edited and deleted. Documents shown without _id (a projection that excludes it) cannot be changed, and the tab says why.

Restore deleted or updated documents

Collection History keeps a local copy of the documents you delete or update, so you can put them back. It is on by default; turn it off, or limit what it records and how long it keeps it, in the Preferences (see Preferences) or per connection. The delete and update dialogs have a tick box to leave one operation out of the history.

1. In the connection tree, expand the collection and double-click Collection history. Its tab lists the recorded deletions and updates, newest first, with the number of documents of each.
2. Select an action. Action preview shows each document before (and, for an update, after) the change.
3. Click Restore documents (or press Enter) and confirm. A deletion puts the documents back; an update puts each document back exactly as it was.

A document is in conflict when restoring it would lose later work: a deleted _id exists again, or an updated document was deleted or changed since. Calculate restore conflicts lists them next to the document the restore would write. Nothing is written for a conflict until you choose what to do with it, for all of them or document by document: leave it and remove it from the history, overwrite the current document, or insert it as a new document with a new _id. Restoring is refused on a read-only connection.

The history holds only your own changes made from this application, on this computer.

Binary values

On a binary value, right-click > Save to File… writes its bytes to a file (this works on read-only connections), and Load from File… replaces the value with a file’s content, keeping the binary subtype. Load is limited by the 16 MB document size.

Follow a reference

On an ObjectId or a DBRef value, right-click > Document > Follow Reference (Shift+F7) opens the document it refers to.

Troubleshooting

See also Copy and paste for inserting documents from the clipboard.