MongoDB Pull

It is therefore important to understand various array operations in MongoDB and how we can use them in your databases.

For this post, we will focus on the MongoDB $pull operator. This operator allows you to remove a value from an existing array based on the specified condition.

Operator Syntax

The following form shows the operator syntax and parameter support:

The following behavior applies to the $pull operator in MongoDB documents:

1. Defining the condition on array elements that embedded documents, the operator will apply the specified condition on each array element as a document collection.
2. If the specified value is an array, the operator will only remove the elements in that match the specified value, order inclusive.
3. If the value to be removed is a document, the operator will remove the elements with exact fields and values, order exclusive.

Let us explore the $pull operator in a practical environment.

Practical Example

Let us start by creating a test collection and add some sample documents. You can use the query as shown below:

Insert sample records.

Suppose we wish to remove “Python” from the supported_langs array, we can run a query as shown:

This should remove the “Python” entry from the supported_lang array. The resulting output is as shown:

We can see the entry “Python” has been removed from the document.

To remove an item from an array of documents, we can run a query as shown:

The command above will remove the item from the technologies array which contains two documents.

The resulting document is as shown:

Output:

From the output above, we can verify the item with the specified parameter has been removed from the technologies array.

Conclusion

This article covers the fundamentals of working with the $pull operator in MongoDB, allowing you to remove items from an array in a given document.