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This post will discuss how to quickly and easily import all three file formats (JSON, CSV, and TSV) into your MongoDB database instance. So without further ado, let’s get started.

What is MongoDB

MongoDB is a NoSQL (non-relational) database system.

If you deal with large amounts of data, fitting disparate data into a cohesive relational model is a pain. SQL databases, also known as relational database management systems (RDBMS), store data in rows and columns according to a predefined design, which is not ideal for storing large amounts of data.

Non-relational or NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB, have dynamic schemas that developers can update on the fly. With an emphasis on greater scalability and fast searches, MongoDB has become the go-to solution for SQL databases.

MongoDB's dynamic schema architecture enables rapid application updates while simplifying programming for developers.

MongoDB is advantageous for developers as it provides official support for all common languages ​​including C, C++, C#, etc. Additionally, net, Go, Java, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Motor, Ruby, Scala, Swift, and Mongod are examples of programming languages.

This enables developers to choose the language of their choice, thereby shortening development time and reducing defects.

Key Features of MongoDB

• Fast queries: MongoDB queries are much faster (up to 100 times faster) than queries in typical relational databases. This is because SQL databases store data in a normalized format, and queries for a single object or entity require joining data from multiple tables, resulting in slower processing.
• Handling large unstructured data: MongoDB’s document data architecture keeps all related data in a single document, enabling it to seamlessly handle large amounts of unstructured data. MongoDB also allows you to query in different ways that are more sensitive to your workload.
• Horizontal Scaling: Horizontal scalability is a key area where most SQL databases fall short. They either support it ad hoc or only on technologies that are still in their infancy.

  MongoDB, on the other hand, allows horizontal scalability, allowing you to add lower-cost commodity servers as needed.

• Sharding: MongoDB allows you to store large amounts of data by distributing it across multiple servers linked to your application. When one server cannot manage the size of the data, the data is automatically sharded to another server.
• Easy for developers: MongoDB's data structure can be mapped to the data structure of computer languages. This will reduce the time and effort required for developers to learn new languages, configure MongoDB, and store data.

mongoimport Command

Before executing the mongoimport command, all users must have the MongoDB database utilities installed on their computers.

The mongoimport command can import content from an extended JSON, CSV, or TSV export created by mongoexport. It also allows you to restore or import data from third-party exporters.

This command is handy when managing a MongoDB database. It is faster than any custom script you might develop to perform the import, and it is multi-threaded.

Other MongoDB command-line tools, such as jq for JSON manipulation, csvkit for CSV manipulation, and even curl for dynamically fetching data files from servers on the Internet, can be used with the mongoimport command.

The mongoimport command has the following syntax:

`mongoimport` <options> <connection-string> <file>

In expanded format it looks like this:

mongoimport --host -u -p --authenticationDatabase --db  --colle --drop --file /name_of_file

In the following sections, we'll look at the various ways you can use the syntax to import different file types, such as JSON, CSV, and TSV.

Application of mongoimport command

There are many situations where you might want to reference some data or import a collection that already exists in your database, regardless of the type of web application your team develops. These tasks include retrieving data from a collection in a JSON or CSV file using the MongoDB mongoimport command.

When your customers use your web application, MongoDB can be used as a backend information source, and mongoimport can help.

JSON is recommended over CSV or TSV file formats because it is both a hierarchical data format and very precise about the type of data it encodes, comparable to MongoDB documents. With this knowledge, we would not encourage you to convert your data to JSON format every time you want to import it using mongoimport; instead, examine it carefully and determine if you want to reorganize it.

Notes on using the mongoimport command

As a precaution, avoid using mongoimport and mongoexport to make full production backups of your instance. The mongoimport and mongoexport commands cannot reliably preserve all rich BSON data types because JSON represents only a subset of BSON types.

Therefore, we recommend using mongodump and mongorestore instead of mongodump and mongorestore.

The following is an example of an insert operation in the mongo shell that uses the shell mode representation of the BSON types date and number to demonstrate how the mongoexport and mongoimport commands maintain information using the strict mode representation:

use test
db.traffic. insert( { _id: 1, volume: NumberLong ('2980001'), date: new Date() } )

The input given to data_numberlong must be quoted to avoid loss of accuracy. Now, when you export the data using mongoexport, we get the following:

mongoexport -- db test --collection traffic -- out traffic.json

To maintain type information, the exported data appears in strict mode representation:

{ "_id" : 1, "volume" : { "$numberLong" : "2980001" }, "date" : { "$date" : "2014-03-13T13:47:42. 483-0400" } }

Import data into MongoDB using the mongoimport command

As mentioned earlier, mongoimport can import JSON, CSV, or TSV files. For clarity and easy navigation, we divide the process of importing data from JSON, CSV, or TSV files into three parts.

Before continuing with these sections, make sure your MongoDB instance is connected to the mongoimport Windows, macOS, or Ubuntu application. While there are several options for connecting mongoimport to your MongoDB database, we recommend using the –uri option, as shown below:

mongoimport --uri 'mongodb+srv: // mycluster-ABCDE.azure.mongodb. net/test?retryWrites=true&w=majority'
   --username='USERNAME'
   --password='PASSWORD'

If you are not using Atlas Deployment, you must create your own URI. If you are connecting to one server, your URL will look like this - mongodb://your.server.host.name:port/, if you are running a replicaset and connecting to different hostnames, your URI will look like this - mongodb://username:password @host1: port,host2:port/?replicaSet=replicasetname.

Import JSON files into MongoDB using the mongoimport command

To import a JSON file from a collection, use the following code:

mongoimport --db DB_Name --c collection_ Name --type= json --
file Name-of-the-file-to-import

1. DB_Name represents the name of the database that contains the collection Collection_Name.
2. type specifies the file type JSON (optional field).
3. The name and path of the JSON file to import/restore is indicated by name-of-file-to-import.

You can also write the above code more compactly as:

mongoimport -d DB_NAME - c COLLECTION _name --file Name-of-the-file-to-import

If you want to drop any existing collections with the same name as the collection you are trying to create/import, you can use the --drop flag in the mongoimport command.

mongoimport -d DB_NAME -c collect._name --drop --file Name-of-file-to-import

When importing JSON data, you can use the MongoDB mongoimport command to change your host or port number.

mongoimport --host 123. 123. 123.1 --port 4567 -d DB _ NAME -c collection _name --file Name-of-the-file-to-import

By default, mongoimport connects to port 27017 of a running mongo on localhost.

Import CSV files into MongoDB using the mongoimport command

You can use the mongoimport command to import a CSV file into a collection with the header row option. However, the header row parameter instructs the mongoimport command not to import the first row as a document because it contains field names instead of data.

Use the following code to import a collection from a CSV file:

mongoimport --db DB_Name --collection collect._Name --type=csv --
headerline --file=Name-of-file-to-import

1. DB_Name represents the name of the database that contains the collection Collection_Name.
2. type specifies the file type CSV (optional field).
3. The title details that the mongoimport command uses the first record of the CSV file as the field names.
4. Name-of-file-to-import indicates the name and path of the CSV file to be imported/restored

Import TSV files into MongoDB using the mongoimport command

TSV files are essentially the same format as CSV files, so whether you use the mongoimport Windows application or another application, you can import TSV files the same way you would CSV files.

There is only one minor difference: instead of using --type=csv, you can use the --type=tsv option to tell mongoimport the new format.