MongoDB Remove Index - A quick demo of removing an index in MongoDB

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to show you the simplest way to remove an index in MongoDB. We’ll first demo how to do in the MongoDB Shell because the syntax is almost exactly the same across the long list of drivers including NodeJS, PHP, Python. We will also show how to remove it using the drivers for NodeJS so you can see how similar it is.

Prerequisites

• You should have MongoDB installed on your system.
• You can follow along using the MongoDB Shell or with whatever driver you’re using.

db.collection.dropIndex() and db.collection.dropIndexes()

Removing an index in MongoDB is referred to as ‘Dropping’ an index in MongoDB. The functions typically used are these two:

• db.collection.dropIndex()
• db.collection.dropIndexes()

You’ll use db.collection.dropIndex() if you want to drop a single specific index and you’ll use db.collection.dropIndexes() if you want to drop all the indexes on a collection.

Demo db.collection.dropIndex()

Let’s jump into a quick demo by creating a super simple database, collection, and then removing an index. Let’s go:

First we’ll create a database grocerydb for a small grocery store:

Then we create a collection for products: > db.createCollection("products");
{ "ok" : 1 }

Then we put some data in the collection: ` > db.collection.insert( [{

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    "name" : "Soda",

    "quantity" : 10,

    "price" : 5.5

} {

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    "name" : "Bread",

    "quantity" : 9,

    "price" : 2.5

} {

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    "name" : "Milk",

    "quantity" : 4,

    "price" : 3.5

}] ) `

Let’s get a list of the indexes on the collection: ` db.products.getIndexes(); [

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    {

            "v" : 2,

            "key" : {

                    "_id" : 1

            },

            "name" : "_id_",

            "ns" : "grocerydb.products"

    }

] `

Every collection has an index so even though we just created it, this collection has an index on the id.

Let’s create and index on the price and then remove it later. Let’s create it first: ` > db.products.createIndex( { price: 1 } ) {

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    "createdCollectionAutomatically" : false,

    "numIndexesBefore" : 1,

    "numIndexesAfter" : 2,

    "ok" : 1

} `

Now let’s list the indices again so we can see the price index before we remove it: ` [

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    {

            "v" : 2,

            "key" : {

                    "_id" : 1

            },

            "name" : "_id_",

            "ns" : "grocerydb.products"

    },

    {

            "v" : 2,

            "key" : {

                    "price" : 1

            },

            "name" : "price_1",

            "ns" : "grocerydb.products"

    }

] `

We can see the name of our new price index is “price_” which we’ll need to remove it.

Now the moment of truth, let’s remove the price index by name: db.products.dropIndex( "price_1" );
{ "nIndexesWas" : 2, "ok" : 1 }

Now let’s list the indexes to verify it was removed: ` db.products.getIndexes(); [

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    {

            "v" : 2,

            "key" : {

                    "_id" : 1

            },

            "name" : "_id_",

            "ns" : "grocerydb.products"

    }

] `

YES! There is now only the index on the id field but the price index was removed as expected.

Demo db.collection.dropIndexes()

Now let’s do a similar demo but we’ll add multiple indexes and then remove them using the dropIndexes() function.

We’ll start off where we left off with the grocerydb with a products collection with the three documents in it.

Let’s add two indexes one on the name and one on the price:

Let’s list our indexes so we can see the new indexes before we remove them:

As you can see we have two new indexes. Now let’s remove both of them using the dropIndexes():

Let’s list our collections to verify that they were removed:

IT WORKED! The two indexes we added were removed.

Note: We’re back to only having the single index on the id. Note that this index was created automatically on the collection and cannot be removed.

NodeJS Javascript Demo

The script to drop the “price_1” index in NodeJS using Javascript would be:

Conclusion

We demonstrated how to remove an index or multiple indexes from a collection using the dropIndex and dropIndexes methods. We demo’d it in the MongoDB Shell and also showed what a script would look like in Javascript.

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