In this guide, you can learn how to use documents in the MongoDB Kotlin driver.
A MongoDB document is a data structure that contains key/value fields in binary JSON (BSON) format. You can use documents and the data they contain in their fields to store data, and you can use them to issue commands or queries in MongoDB.
For more information on the terminology, structure, and limitations of documents, read our page on Documents in the MongoDB manual.
The MongoDB Kotlin driver and BSON library include the following classes that help you access and manipulate the BSON data in documents:
Name
Package
Implements Map
Recommended Usage
Document
org.bson
Yes, implements Map<String, Object>
When you want a flexible and concise data representation.
BsonDocument
org.bson
Yes, implements Map<String, BsonValue>
When you need a type-safe API.
JsonObject
org.bson.json
No
When you only want to work with JSON strings.
While you can use any of these classes in your application, we recommend that you use the Document class since it can concisely represent dynamically structured documents of any complexity. It implements the Map<String, Object> interface which enables it to use loosely-typed values.
The Document class offers a flexible representation of a BSON document. You can access and manipulate fields using Kotlin types from the standard library with this class. See the following table for mappings between frequently-used BSON and Kotlin types:
BSON type
Kotlin type
Array
kotlin.collections.List
Binary
org.bson.types.Binary
Boolean
kotlin.Boolean
Date
java.time.LocalDateTime
Document
org.bson.Document
Double
kotlin.Double
Int32
kotlin.Int
Int64
kotlin.Long
Null
null
ObjectId
org.bson.types.ObjectId
String
kotlin.String
In the following code snippet, we show how to instantiate and build a sample Document instance representing a document containing several different field types:
val author = Document("_id", ObjectId()) .append("name", "Gabriel García Márquez") .append( "dateOfDeath", LocalDateTime.of(2014, 4, 17, 4, 0) ) .append( "novels", listOf( Document("title", "One Hundred Years of Solitude").append("yearPublished", 1967), Document("title", "Chronicle of a Death Foretold").append("yearPublished", 1981), Document("title", "Love in the Time of Cholera").append("yearPublished", 1985) ) )To insert this document into a collection, instantiate a collection using the getCollection() method and call the insertOne operation as follows:
val database = mongoClient.getDatabase("fundamentals_data")val collection = database.getCollection<Document>("authors")val result = collection.insertOne(author)Once you perform a successful insert, you can retrieve the sample document data from the collection using the following code:
val doc = collection.find(Filters.eq("name", "Gabriel García Márquez")).firstOrNull()doc?.let { println("_id: ${it.getObjectId("_id")}, name: ${it.getString("name")}, dateOfDeath: ${it.getDate("dateOfDeath")}") it.getList("novels", Document::class.java).forEach { novel -> println("title: ${novel.getString("title")}, yearPublished: ${novel.getInteger("yearPublished")}") }}_id: 5fb5fad05f734e3794741a35, name: Gabriel García Márquez, dateOfDeath: Thu Apr 17 00:00:00 EDT 2014title: One Hundred Years of Solitude, yearPublished: 1967title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, yearPublished: 1981title: Love in the Time of Cholera, yearPublished: 1985The preceding code sample uses helper methods that check the returned type and throw an exception if it is unable to cast the field value. You can call the get() method to retrieve values as type Object and to skip type checking.
For more information on retrieving and manipulating MongoDB data, see our CRUD guide.
For more information about the methods and classes mentioned in this section, see the following API Documentation:
The BsonDocument class provides a type-safe API to access and manipulate a BSON document. You need to specify the BSON type from the BSON library for each field. See the following table for mappings between frequently-used BSON and BSON library types:
BSON type
BSON library type
Array
org.bson.BsonArray
Binary
org.bson.BsonBinary
Boolean
org.bson.Boolean
Date (long value)
org.bson.BsonDateTime
Document
org.bson.BsonDocument
Double
org.bson.BsonDouble
Int32
org.bson.BsonInt32
Int64
org.bson.BsonInt64
Null
org.bson.BsonNull
ObjectId
org.bson.BsonObjectId
String
org.bson.BsonString
In the following code snippet, we show how to instantiate and build a sample BsonDocument instance representing a document containing several different field types:
val author = BsonDocument() .append("_id", BsonObjectId()) .append("name", BsonString("Gabriel García Márquez")) .append( "dateOfDeath", BsonDateTime( LocalDateTime.of(2014, 4, 17, 0, 0).atZone(ZoneId.of("America/New_York")).toInstant().toEpochMilli() ) ) .append( "novels", BsonArray( listOf( BsonDocument().append("title", BsonString("One Hundred Years of Solitude")) .append("yearPublished", BsonInt32(1967)), BsonDocument().append("title", BsonString("Chronicle of a Death Foretold")) .append("yearPublished", BsonInt32(1981)), BsonDocument().append("title", BsonString("Love in the Time of Cholera")) .append("yearPublished", BsonInt32(1985)) ) ) )To insert this document into a collection, instantiate a collection using the getCollection() method specifying the BsonDocument class as the documentClass parameter. Then, call the insertOne operation as follows:
val database = mongoClient.getDatabase("fundamentals_data")val collection = database.getCollection<BsonDocument>("authors")val result: InsertOneResult = collection.insertOne(author)Once you perform a successful insert, you can retrieve the sample document data from the collection using the following code:
val doc = collection.find(Filters.eq("name", "Gabriel García Márquez")).firstOrNull()doc?.let { println("_id: ${it.getObjectId("_id").value}, name: ${it.getString("name").value}, dateOfDeath: ${Instant.ofEpochMilli(it.getDateTime("dateOfDeath").value).atZone(ZoneId.of("America/New_York")).toLocalDateTime()}") it.getArray("novels").forEach { novel -> val novelDocument = novel.asDocument() println("title: ${novelDocument.getString("title").value}, yearPublished: ${novelDocument.getInt32("yearPublished").value}") }}_id: 5fb5fad05f734e3794741a35, name: Gabriel García Márquez, dateOfDeath: 2014-04-17T00:00title: One Hundred Years of Solitude, yearPublished: 1967title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, yearPublished: 1981title: Love in the Time of Cholera, yearPublished: 1985The preceding code sample uses helper methods that check the returned type and throw a BsonInvalidOperationException if it is unable to cast the field value. You can call the get() method to retrieve values as type BsonValue and to skip type checking.
For more information about the methods and classes mentioned in this section, see the following API Documentation:
The JsonObject class acts as a wrapper for JSON strings. If you only want to work with JSON data, you can use JsonObject to avoid unnecessary data conversion to a Map object.
By default, JsonObject stores Extended JSON. You can customize the format of JSON in JsonObject by specifying a JsonObjectCodec and passing it a JsonWriterSettings object. For more information on JSON formats, see our Extended JSON guide.
In the following code snippet, we show how to instantiate a sample JsonObject instance wrapping an Extended JSON string containing different types of key value pairs:
val ejsonStr = """ {"_id": {"${"$"}oid": "6035210f35bd203721c3eab8"}, "name": "Gabriel García Márquez", "dateOfDeath": {"${"$"}date": "2014-04-17T04:00:00Z"}, "novels": [ {"title": "One Hundred Years of Solitude","yearPublished": 1967}, {"title": "Chronicle of a Death Foretold","yearPublished": 1981}, {"title": "Love in the Time of Cholera","yearPublished": 1985}]} """.trimIndent()val author = JsonObject(ejsonStr)To insert this document into a collection, instantiate a collection using the getCollection() method specifying the JsonObject class as the documentClass parameter. Then, call the insertOne operation as follows:
val database = mongoClient.getDatabase("fundamentals_data")val collection= database.getCollection<JsonObject>("authors")val result = collection.insertOne(author)Once you perform a successful insert, you can retrieve the sample JSON data from the collection. While you can use any class that extends Bson to specify your query, here is how to query your data using a JsonObject:
val query = JsonObject("{\"name\": \"Gabriel Garc\\u00eda M\\u00e1rquez\"}")val jsonResult = collection.find(query).firstOrNull()jsonResult?.let { println("query result in extended json format: " + jsonResult.json)}query result in extended json format: {"_id": {"$oid": "6035210f35bd203721c3eab8"}, "name": "Gabriel García Márquez", "dateOfDeath": {"$date": "2014-04-17T04:00:00Z"}, "novels": [{"title": "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "yearPublished": 1967}, {"title": "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", "yearPublished": 1981}, {"title": "Love in the Time of Cholera", "yearPublished": 1985}]}For more information about the methods and classes mentioned in this section, see the following API Documentation:
In this guide, we covered the following topics on classes you can use to work with BSON data:
Described Kotlin classes you can use to work with MongoDB documents and why you might prefer one over the other.
Provided usage examples for each class on building documents containing multiple types, inserting them into a collection, and retrieving/accessing their typed fields.
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