The mongo Shell

The mongo Shell

On this page

• Start the mongo Shell and Connect to MongoDB
• Working with the mongo Shell
• Tab Completion and Other Keyboard Shortcuts
• .mongorc.js File
• Exit the Shell

The mongo shell is an interactive JavaScript interface to MongoDB. You can use the mongo shell to query and update data as well as perform administrative operations.

The mongo shell is a component of the MongoDB distributions. Once you have installed and have started MongoDB, connect the mongo shell to your running MongoDB instance.

Start the mongo Shell and Connect to MongoDB

Prerequisites

Ensure that MongoDB is running before attempting to start the mongo shell.

Open a terminal window (or a command prompt for Windows) and go to your <mongodb installationdir>/bin directory:

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cd <mongodb installation dir>/bin

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Adding your <mongodb installation dir>/bin to the PATH environment variable allows you to type mongo instead of having to go to the <mongodb installation dir>/bin directory or specify the full path to the binary.

Local MongoDB Instance on Default Port

You can run mongo shell without any command-line options to connect to a MongoDB instance running on your localhost with default port 27017:

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mongo

Local MongoDB Instance on a Non-default Port

To explicitly specify the port, include the --port command-line option. For example, to connect to a MongoDB instance running on localhost with a non-default port 28015:

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mongo --port 28015

MongoDB Instance on a Remote Host

To explicitly specify the hostname and/or port,

• You can specify a connection string. For example, to connect to a MongoDB instance running on a remote host machine with default port 27017:

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  mongo "mongodb://mongodb0.example.com:27017"
  

• You can use the command-line option <