How to Use LIKE Statement in MongoDB

MongoDB is an powerful Nosql database server. MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas to store data.

Its always a critical task for a develop to organize data. As it plays most important role in the application performance. In Mongodb, you can use queries similar to SQL LIKE statement to fetch data.

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For the examples used in this tutorial, we uses some dummy data as below. You can also create a database and execute below commands to insert dummy data.

db.colors.insert({ "id": 100, "color": "Pink"})
db.colors.insert({ "id": 101, "color": "Purple"})
db.colors.insert({ "id": 102, "color": "Black"})
db.colors.insert({ "id": 103, "color": "Blue"})

Using .find()

The Mongodb find() command is used to search documents from a collection. This function provides flexible options to search documents.

The default find() function retrieve all the documents in a collection. It also allows you to query a collection of documents, by passing a few simple parameters, and return a cursor.

A simple example of the .find() method look like below:

> db.colors.find()

{ "_id" : ObjectId("5f697e4ccc528930cde49f53"), "id" : 100, "color" : "Pink" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("5f697e4fcc528930cde49f54"), "id" : 101, "color" : "Purple" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("5f697e52cc528930cde49f55"), "id" : 102, "color" : "Black" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("5f697e55cc528930cde49f56"), "id" : 103, "color" : "Blue" }

The above returns all the documents in a collection. But this is very uncommon on production requirements. You always required some filtered results from a database.

For example, fetch all documents contains “color: Pink”. Execute query like:

>  db.colors.find({color: "Pink"})

Using .find() as SQL LIKE Statement

You can use regular expression for searching documents in monogdb. This will be similar to LIKE statements in SQL queries.

1. Search String Anywhere – To search all document where color name have “Pink” anywhere in string. The second statement searches for all documents where color have "Bl" in there name.

   ### SQL Statement 
   select * from colors where color LIKE "%Pink%"
   
   ### Mongodb Statement 
   db.colors.find(color: "/Pink/")
   

   

2. Search String Start With – This will match all the string start with P characters. The carrot “^” symbol is used for start with.

   ### SQL Statement 
   select * from colors where color LIKE "P%"
   
   ### Mongodb Statement 
   db.colors.find(color: "/^P/")
   

   

3. Search String End With – The dollar “$” symbol is used to match string ends with specific characters. The below example matches all strings ends with “k” character.

   ### SQL Statement 
   select * from colors where color LIKE "%k"
   
   ### Mongodb Statement 
   db.colors.find(color: "/k$/")
   

   

4. Search String In Any Case – The default find method search with case-sensitive. You can instruct find command to match characters in any case with “i” option as used in below example.

   ### SQL Statement 
   select * from colors where color LIKE BINARY "pink"
   
   ### Mongodb Statement 
   db.colors.find(color: "/pink/i")
   

   

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned to to search database similar to SQL LIKE statements in Mongodb.