i have created and want to now import a dummy collection. one of the fields in each item are "created" and "updated" fields. what can i put in the source/json file so that MongoDb will use the current date and time as the value on import?
this wont work
"created" : Date()
mongoimport
is intended for importing data existing data in CSV, TSV, or JSON format. If you want to insert new fields (such as a created
timestamp) you will have to set a value for them.
For example, if you want to set the created
timestamp to the current time, you could get a unix timestamp from the command line (which will be seconds since the epoch):
$ date +%s
1349960286
The JSON <date>
representation that mongoimport
expects is a 64-bit signed integer representing milliseconds since the epoch. You'll need to multiply the unixtime seconds value by 1000 and include in your JSON file:
{ "created": Date(1349960286000) }
An alternative approach would be to add the created timestamps to documents after they have been inserted.
For example:
db.mycoll.update(
{created: { $exists : false }}, // Query criteria
{ $set : { created: new Date() }}, // Add 'created' timestamp
false, // upsert
true // update all matching documents
)
As Stennie correctly pointed out, you can not do this with just mongoimport
or mongorestore
: they are just for restoring your previously dumped data. Correct way of doing this is to restore the data and then to make update on the restored data.
With a new mongo 2.6 you can do this easily using $currentDate operation, which was created to update time to a current timestamp.
In your case you need something like
db.users.update(
{},
{
$currentDate: {
created: true,
updated: true
},
}
)