Finding Documents

Reading data back out uses find(), which returns every matching document, and findOne(), which returns just the first match.

An isometric illustration of a magnifying glass hovering over a stack of document icons, highlighting one in green

find() — Every Match

Called with no arguments, find() returns every document in the collection:

db.users.find()

Pass a query object to filter by field value — this returns every document where age is exactly 27:

db.users.find({ age: 27 })

findOne() — Just the First Match

Use findOne() when you expect (or only care about) a single result — it returns one document object directly, not a list:

db.users.findOne({ email: "ananya@example.com" })

Making Output Readable

Chain .pretty() in the shell to format results with indentation instead of a single line of JSON:

db.users.find().pretty()

find() returns a cursor

find() actually returns a cursor, not an array — the shell automatically prints the first 20 results and lets you type it to see more. From application code (Node.js, later in this course), you typically convert the cursor to an array with .toArray().