Capped Collections
On this page
- Overview
- Behavior
- Insertion Order
- Automatic Removal of Oldest Documents
- Oplog Collection
_id
Index- Restrictions and Recommendations
- Reads
- Updates
- Sharding
- Query Efficiency
- Aggregation
$out
- Transactions
- Stable API
- Procedures
- Create a Capped Collection
- Query a Capped Collection
- Check if a Collection is Capped
- Convert a Collection to Capped
- Change a Capped Collection's Size
- Change the Maximum Number of Documents in a Capped Collection
- Tailable Cursor
Overview
Capped collections are fixed-size collections that support high-throughput operations that insert and retrieve documents based on insertion order. Capped collections work in a way similar to circular buffers: once a collection fills its allocated space, it makes room for new documents by overwriting the oldest documents in the collection.
See createCollection()
or create
for more information on creating capped collections.
Tip
As an alternative to capped collections, consider MongoDB's TTL (Time To Live) indexes. As described in Expire Data from Collections by Setting TTL, these indexes allow you to expire and remove data from normal collections based on the value of a date-typed field and a TTL value for the index.
TTL indexes are not compatible with capped collections.
Behavior
Insertion Order
Capped collections guarantee preservation of the insertion order. As a result, queries do not need an index to return documents in insertion order. Without this indexing overhead, capped collections can support higher insertion throughput.
Automatic Removal of Oldest Documents
To make room for new documents, capped collections automatically remove the oldest documents in the collection without requiring scripts or explicit remove operations.
Consider the following potential use cases for capped collections:
Store log information generated by high-volume systems. Inserting documents in a capped collection without an index is close to the speed of writing log information directly to a file system. Furthermore, the built-in first-in-first-out property maintains the order of events, while managing storage use. For example, the oplog uses a capped collection.
Cache small amounts of data in a capped collections. Since caches are read rather than write heavy, you would either need to ensure that this collection always remains in the working set (i.e. in RAM) or accept some write penalty for the required index or indexes.
Oplog Collection
The oplog.rs collection that stores a log of the operations in a replica set uses a capped collection.
Starting in MongoDB 4.0, unlike other capped collections, the oplog can
grow past its configured size limit to avoid deleting the majority
commit point
.
Note
MongoDB rounds the capped size of the oplog up to the nearest integer multiple of 256, in bytes.
_id
Index
Capped collections have an _id
field and an index on the _id
field by default.
Restrictions and Recommendations
Reads
Starting in MongoDB 5.0, you cannot use read concern
"snapshot"
when reading from a
capped collection.
Updates
If you plan to update documents in a capped collection, create an index so that these update operations do not require a collection scan.
Sharding
You cannot shard a capped collection.
Query Efficiency
Use natural ordering to retrieve the most recently inserted elements
from the collection efficiently. This is similar to using the tail
command on a log file.
Aggregation $out
The aggregation pipeline stage $out
cannot write results to a capped collection.
Transactions
You cannot write to capped collections in transactions.
Stable API
Capped collections are not supported in Stable API V1.
Procedures
Create a Capped Collection
You must create capped collections explicitly using the
db.createCollection()
method, which is a
mongosh
helper for the create
command.
When creating a capped collection you must specify the maximum size of
the collection in bytes, which MongoDB will pre-allocate for the
collection. The size of the capped collection includes a small amount of
space for internal overhead.
db.createCollection( "log", { capped: true, size: 100000 } )
Note
The value that you provide for the size
field
must be greater than 0
and less than or equal to
1024^5
(1 PB). MongoDB rounds the size
of all capped
collections up to the nearest integer multiple of 256, in bytes.
Additionally, you may also specify a maximum number of documents for the
collection using the max
field as in the following document:
db.createCollection("log", { capped : true, size : 5242880, max : 5000 } )
Important
The size
argument is always required, even when
you specify the max
number of documents. MongoDB removes older
documents if a collection reaches the maximum size limit before it
reaches the maximum document count.
Query a Capped Collection
If you perform a find()
on a capped collection
with no ordering specified, MongoDB guarantees that the ordering of
results is the same as the insertion order.
To retrieve documents in reverse insertion order, issue
find()
along with the sort()
method with the $natural
parameter set to -1
, as shown
in the following example:
db.cappedCollection.find().sort( { $natural: -1 } )
Check if a Collection is Capped
Use the isCapped()
method to determine if a
collection is capped, as follows:
db.collection.isCapped()
Convert a Collection to Capped
You can convert a non-capped collection to a capped collection with
the convertToCapped
command:
db.runCommand({"convertToCapped": "mycoll", size: 100000});
The size
parameter specifies the size of the capped collection in
bytes.
This holds a database exclusive lock for the duration of the operation. Other operations which lock the same database will be blocked until the operation completes. See What locks are taken by some common client operations? for operations that lock the database.
Change a Capped Collection's Size
New in version 6.0.
You can resize a capped collection using the collMod
command's
cappedSize
option to set the cappedSize
in bytes. cappedSize
must be
greater than 0
and less than or equal to 1024^5
(1 PB).
Note
Before you can resize a capped collection, you must have already set
the featureCompatibilityVersion to at least version
"6.0"
.
For example, the following command sets the maximum size of the "log"
capped
collection to 100000 bytes:
db.runCommand( { collMod: "log", cappedSize: 100000 } )
Change the Maximum Number of Documents in a Capped Collection
New in version 6.0.
To change the maximum number of documents in a capped collection, use the
collMod
command's cappedMax
option. If cappedMax
is less
than or equal to 0
, there is no maximum document limit. If
cappedMax
is less than the current number of documents in the
collection, MongoDB removes the excess documents on the next insert operation.
For example, the following command sets the maximum number of documents in the
"log"
capped collection to 500:
db.runCommand( { collMod: "log", cappedMax: 500 } )
Tailable Cursor
You can use a tailable cursor with capped collections. Similar to the
Unix tail -f
command, the tailable cursor "tails" the end of a
capped collection. As new documents are inserted into the capped
collection, you can use the tailable cursor to continue retrieving
documents.
See Tailable Cursors for information on creating a tailable cursor.