An example of using Java based bean metadata to register an instance of a com.mongodb.Mongo is shown below

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

  /*
   * Use the standard Mongo driver API to create a com.mongodb.Mongo instance.
   */
   public @Bean Mongo mongo() throws UnknownHostException {
       return new Mongo("localhost");
   }
}      

This approach allows you to use the standard com.mongodb.Mongo API that you may already be used to using but also pollutes the code with the UnknownHostException checked exception. The use of the checked exception is not desirable as Java based bean metadata uses methods as a means to set object dependencies, making the calling code cluttered.

An alternative is to register an instance of com.mongodb.Mongo instance with the container using Spring's MongoFactoryBean. As compared to instantiating a com.mongodb.Mongo instance directly, the FactoryBean approach does not throw a checked exception and has the added advantage of also providing the container with an ExceptionTranslator implementation that translates MongoDB exceptions to exceptions in Spring's portable DataAccessException hierarchy for data access classes annoated with the @Repository annotation. This hierarchy and use of @Repository is described in Spring's DAO support features.

An example of a Java based bean metadata that supports exception translation on @Repository annotated classes is shown below:

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    /*
     * Factory bean that creates the com.mongodb.Mongo instance
     */
     public @Bean MongoFactoryBean mongo() {
          MongoFactoryBean mongo = new MongoFactoryBean();
          mongo.setHost("localhost");
          return mongo;
     }
}

While you can use Spring's traditional <beans/> XML namespace to register an instance of com.mongodb.Mongo with the container, the XML can be quite verbose as it is general purpose. XML namespaces are a better alternative to configuring commonly used objects such as the Mongo instance. The mongo namespace alows you to create a Mongo instance server location, replica-sets, and options.

To use the Mongo namespace elements you will need to reference the Mongo schema:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
          xmlns:mongo="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/mongo"
          xsi:schemaLocation=
          "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/mongo
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/mongo/spring-mongo-1.0.xsd
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">

    <!-- Default bean name is 'mongo' -->
    <mongo:mongo host="localhost" port="27017"/>

</beans>
        

A more advanced configuration with MongoOptions is shown below (note these are not recommended values)

<beans>

  <mongo:mongo host="localhost" port="27017">
    <mongo:options connections-per-host="8"
                   threads-allowed-to-block-for-connection-multiplier="4"
                   connect-timeout="1000"
                   max-wait-time="1500}"
                   auto-connect-retry="true"
                   socket-keep-alive="true"
                   socket-timeout="1500"
                   slave-ok="true"
                   write-number="1"
                   write-timeout="0"
                   write-fsync="true"/>
  </mongo:mongo/>

</beans>
        

A configuration using replica sets is shown below.

<mongo:mongo id="replicaSetMongo" replica-set="127.0.0.1:27017,localhost:27018"/>	   

While com.mongodb.Mongo is the entry point to the MongoDB driver API, connecting to a specific MongoDB database instance requires additional information such as the database name and an optional username and password. With that information you can obtain a com.mongodb.DB object and access all the functionality of a specific MongoDB database instance. Spring provides the org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoDbFactory interface shown below to bootstrap connectivity to the database.

public interface MongoDbFactory {

  DB getDb() throws DataAccessException;

  DB getDb(String dbName) throws DataAccessException;
}

The following sections show how you can use the contiainer with either Java or the XML based metadata to configure an instance of the MongoDbFactory interface. In turn, you can use the MongoDbFactory instance to configure MongoTemplate.

The class org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.SimpleMongoDbFactory provides implements the MongoDbFactory interface and is created with a standard com.mongodb.Mongo instance, the database name and an optional org.springframework.data.authentication.UserCredentials constructor argument.

Instead of using the IoC container to create an instance of MongoTemplate, you can just use them in standard Java code as shown below.

public class MongoApp {

  private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(MongoApp.class);

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

    MongoOperations mongoOps = new MongoTemplate(new SimpleMongoDbFactory(new Mongo(), "database"));

    mongoOps.insert(new Person("Joe", 34));

    log.info(mongoOps.findOne(new Query(where("name").is("Joe")), Person.class));

    mongoOps.dropCollection("person");
  }
}

The code in bold highlights the use of SimpleMongoDbFactory and is the only difference between the listing shown in the getting started section.

To register a MongoDbFactory instance with the container, you write code much like what was highlighted in the previous code listing. A simple example is shown below

@Configuration
public class MongoConfiguration {
  
  public @Bean MongoDbFactory mongoDbFactory() throws Exception {
    return new SimpleMongoDbFactory(new Mongo(), "database");
  }
}

To define the username and password create an instance of org.springframework.data.authentication.UserCredentials and pass it into the constructor as shown below. This listing also shows using MongoDbFactory register an instance of MongoTemplate with the container.

@Configuration
public class MongoConfiguration {
  
  public @Bean MongoDbFactory mongoDbFactory() throws Exception {
    UserCredentials userCredentials = new UserCredentials("joe", "secret");
    return new SimpleMongoDbFactory(new Mongo(), "database", userCredentials);
  }

  public @Bean MongoTemplate mongoTemplate() throws Exception {
    return new MongoTemplate(mongoDbFactory());
  }
}

The mongo namespace provides a convient way to create a SimpleMongoDbFactory as compared to using the<beans/> namespace. Simple usage is shown below

<mongo:db-factory dbname="database">

In the above example a com.mongodb.Mongo instance is created using the default host and port number. The SimpleMongoDbFactory registered with the container is identified by the id 'mongoDbFactory' unless a value for the id attribute is specified.

You can also provide the host and port for the underlying com.mongodb.Mongo instance as shown below, in addition to username and password for the database.

<mongo:db-factory id="anotherMongoDbFactory"
                  host="localhost"
                  port="27017"
                  dbname="database"
                  username="joe"
                  password="secret"/>

If you need to configure additional options on the com.mongodb.Mongo instance that is used to create a SimpleMongoDbFactory you can refer to an existing bean using the mongo-ref attribute as shown below. To show another common usage pattern, this listing show the use of a property placeholder to parameterise the configuration and creating MongoTemplate.

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:/com/myapp/mongodb/config/mongo.properties"/>

<mongo:mongo host="${mongo.host}" port="${mongo.port}">
  <mongo:options
     connections-per-host="${mongo.connectionsPerHost}"
     threads-allowed-to-block-for-connection-multiplier="${mongo.threadsAllowedToBlockForConnectionMultiplier}"
     connect-timeout="${mongo.connectTimeout}"
     max-wait-time="${mongo.maxWaitTime}"
     auto-connect-retry="${mongo.autoConnectRetry}"
     socket-keep-alive="${mongo.socketKeepAlive}"
     socket-timeout="${mongo.socketTimeout}"
     slave-ok="${mongo.slaveOk}"
     write-number="1"
     write-timeout="0"
     write-fsync="true"/>
</mongo:mongo>

<mongo:db-factory dbname="database" mongo-ref="mongo"/>

<bean id="anotherMongoTemplate" class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate">
  <constructor-arg name="mongoDbFactory" ref="mongoDbFactory"/>
</bean>

You can use Java to create and register an instance of MongoTemplate as shown below.

@Configuration
public class AppConfig {

    public @Bean Mongo mongo() throws Exception {
        return new Mongo("localhost");
    }

    public @Bean MongoTemplate mongoTemplate() throws Exception {
        return new MongoTemplate(mongo(), "mydatabase");
    }
}
        

There are several overloaded constructors of MongoTemplate. These are

You can also configure a MongoTemplate using Spring's XML <beans/> schema.

  <mongo:mongo host="localhost" port="27017"/>
  
  <bean id="mongoTemplate" class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate">
    <constructor-arg ref="mongo"/>
    <constructor-arg name="databaseName" value="geospatial"/>
  </bean>

Other optional properties that you might like to set when creating a MongoTemplate are the default WriteResultCheckingPolicy, WriteConcern, and ReadPreference.

	Note
	The preferred way to reference the operations on MongoTemplate instance is via its interface MongoOperations.

public interface WriteConcernResolver {
  WriteConcern resolve(MongoAction action);
}

private class MyAppWriteConcernResolver implements WriteConcernResolver {

  public WriteConcern resolve(MongoAction action) {
    if (action.getEntityClass().getSimpleName().contains("Audit")) {
      return WriteConcern.NONE;
    } else if (action.getEntityClass().getSimpleName().contains("Metadata")) {
      return WriteConcern.JOURNAL_SAFE;
    }
    return action.getDefaultWriteConcern();
  }
}

MongoDB requires that you have an '_id' field for all documents. If you don't provide one the driver will assign a ObjectId with a generated value. When using the MongoMappingConverter there are certain rules that govern how properties from the Java class is mapped to this '_id' field.

The following outlines what property will be mapped to the '_id' document field:

The following outlines what type conversion, if any, will be done on the property mapped to the _id document field when using the MappingMongoConverter, the default for MongoTemplate.

If no field or property specified above is present in the Java class then an implicit '_id' file will be generated by the driver but not mapped to a property or field of the Java class.

When querying and updating MongoTemplate will use the converter to handle conversions of the Query and Update objects that correspond to the above rules for saving documents so field names and types used in your queries will be able to match what is in your domain classes.

As MongoDB collections can contain documents that represent instances of a variety of types. A great example here is if you store a hierarchy of classes or simply have a class with a property of type Object. In the latter case the values held inside that property have to be read in correctly when retrieving the object. Thus we need a mechanism to store type information alongside the actual document.

To achieve that the MappingMongoConverter uses a MongoTypeMapper abstraction with DefaultMongoTypeMapper as it's main implementation. It's default behaviour is storing the fully qualified classname under _class inside the document for the top-level document as well as for every value if it's a complex type and a subtype of the property type declared.

public class Sample {
  Contact value;
}

public abstract class Contact { … }

public class Person extends Contact { … }

Sample sample = new Sample();
sample.value = new Person();

mongoTemplate.save(sample);

{ "_class" : "com.acme.Sample",
  "value" : { "_class" : "com.acme.Person" }
}

As you can see we store the type information for the actual root class persistet as well as for the nested type as it is complex and a subtype of Contact. So if you're now using mongoTemplate.findAll(Object.class, "sample") we are able to find out that the document stored shall be a Sample instance. We are also able to find out that the value property shall be a Person actually.

There are several convenient methods on MongoTemplate for saving and inserting your objects. To have more fine grained control over the conversion process you can register Spring converters with the MappingMongoConverter, for example Converter<Person, DBObject> and Converter<DBObject, Person>.

	Note
	The difference between insert and save operations is that a save operation will perform an insert if the object is not already present.

The simple case of using the save operation is to save a POJO. In this case the collection name will be determined by name (not fully qualfied) of the class. You may also call the save operation with a specific collection name. The collection to store the object can be overriden using mapping metadata.

When inserting or saving, if the Id property is not set, the assumption is that its value will be autogenerated by the database. As such, for autogeneration of an ObjectId to succeed the type of the Id property/field in your class must be either a String, ObjectId, or BigInteger.

Here is a basic example of using the save operation and retrieving its contents.

import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.where;
import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.query;

…

Person p = new Person("Bob", 33);
mongoTemplate.insert(p);

Person qp = mongoTemplate.findOne(query(where("age").is(33)), Person.class);        

The insert/save operations available to you are listed below.

A similar set of insert operations is listed below

For updates we can elect to update the first document found using MongoOperation's method updateFirst or we can update all documents that were found to match the query using the method updateMulti. Here is an example of an update of all SAVINGS accounts where we are adding a one time $50.00 bonus to the balance using the $inc operator.

import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.where;
import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Query;
import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Update;

          ...

  WriteResult wr = mongoTemplate.updateMulti(new Query(where("accounts.accountType").is(Account.Type.SAVINGS)),
                                                            new Update().inc("accounts.$.balance", 50.00),
                                                            Account.class);
        

In addition to the Query discussed above we provide the update definition using an Update object. The Update class has methods that match the update modifiers available for MongoDB.

As you can see most methods return the Update object to provide a fluent style for the API.

Related to perfomring an updateFirst operations, you can also perform an upsert operation which will perform an insert if no document is found that matches the query. The document that is inserted is a combination of the query document and the update document. Here is an example

template.upsert(query(where("ssn").is(1111).and("firstName").is("Joe").and("Fraizer").is("Update")), update("address", addr), Person.class);

The findAndModify(…) method on DBCollection can update a document and return either the old or newly updated document in a single operation. MongoTemplate provides a findAndModify method that takes Query and Update classes and converts from DBObject to your POJOs. Here are the methods

<T> T findAndModify(Query query, Update update, Class<T> entityClass);

<T> T findAndModify(Query query, Update update, Class<T> entityClass, String collectionName);

<T> T findAndModify(Query query, Update update, FindAndModifyOptions options, Class<T> entityClass);

<T> T findAndModify(Query query, Update update, FindAndModifyOptions options, Class<T> entityClass, String collectionName);

As an example usage, we will insert of few Person objects into the container and perform a simple findAndUpdate operation

mongoTemplate.insert(new Person("Tom", 21));
mongoTemplate.insert(new Person("Dick", 22));
mongoTemplate.insert(new Person("Harry", 23));

Query query = new Query(Criteria.where("firstName").is("Harry"));
Update update = new Update().inc("age", 1);
Person p = mongoTemplate.findAndModify(query, update, Person.class); // return's old person object

assertThat(p.getFirstName(), is("Harry"));
assertThat(p.getAge(), is(23));
p = mongoTemplate.findOne(query, Person.class);
assertThat(p.getAge(), is(24));


// Now return the newly updated document when updating
p = template.findAndModify(query, update, new FindAndModifyOptions().returnNew(true), Person.class);
assertThat(p.getAge(), is(25));

The FindAndModifyOptions lets you set the options of returnNew, upsert, and remove. An example extending off the previous code snippit is shown below

Query query2 = new Query(Criteria.where("firstName").is("Mary"));
p = mongoTemplate.findAndModify(query2, update, new FindAndModifyOptions().returnNew(true).upsert(true), Person.class);
assertThat(p.getFirstName(), is("Mary"));
assertThat(p.getAge(), is(1));

You can use several overloaded methods to remove an object from the database.

We saw how to retrieve a single document using the findOne and findById methods on MongoTemplate in previous sections which return a single domain object. We can also query for a collection of documents to be returned as a list of domain objects. Assuming that we have a number of Person objects with name and age stored as documents in a collection and that each person has an embedded account document with a balance. We can now run a query using the following code.

import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.where;
import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Query.query;

…

List<Person> result = mongoTemplate.find(query(where("age").lt(50)
                                                .and("accounts.balance").gt(1000.00d)), Person.class);        

All find methods take a Query object as a parameter. This object defines the criteria and options used to perform the query. The criteria is specified using a Criteria object that has a static factory method named where used to instantiate a new Criteria object. We recommend using a static import for org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.where and Query.query to make the query more readable.

This query should return a list of Person objects that meet the specified criteria. The Criteria class has the following methods that correspond to the operators provided in MongoDB.

As you can see most methods return the Criteria object to provide a fluent style for the API.

There are also methods on the Criteria class for geospatial queries. Here is a listing but look at the section on GeoSpatial Queries to see them in action.

The Query class has some additional methods used to provide options for the query.

The query methods need to specify the target type T that will be returned and they are also overloaded with an explicit collection name for queries that should operate on a collection other than the one indicated by the return type.

MongoDB supports GeoSpatial queries through the use of operators such as $near, $within, and $nearSphere. Methods specific to geospatial queries are available on the Criteria class. There are also a few shape classes, Box, Circle, and Point that are used in conjunction with geospatial related Criteria methods.

To understand how to perform GeoSpatial queries we will use the following Venue class taken from the integration tests.which relies on using the rich MappingMongoConverter.

@Document(collection="newyork")
public class Venue {
    
  @Id
  private String id;
  private String name;
  private double[] location;
  
  @PersistenceConstructor
  Venue(String name, double[] location) {
    super();
    this.name = name;
    this.location = location;    
  }
  
  public Venue(String name, double x, double y) {
    super();
    this.name = name;
    this.location = new double[] { x, y };    
  }

  public String getName() {
    return name;
  }

  public double[] getLocation() {
    return location;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return "Venue [id=" + id + ", name=" + name + ", location="
        + Arrays.toString(location) + "]";
  } 
}

To find locations within a Circle, the following query can be used.

Circle circle = new Circle(-73.99171, 40.738868, 0.01);
List<Venue> venues = 
    template.find(new Query(Criteria.where("location").withinCenter(circle)), Venue.class);

To find venues within a Circle using spherical coordinates the following query can be used

Circle circle = new Circle(-73.99171, 40.738868, 0.003712240453784);
List<Venue> venues = 
    template.find(new Query(Criteria.where("location").withinCenterSphere(circle)), Venue.class);

To find venues within a Box the following query can be used

//lower-left then upper-right
Box box = new Box(new Point(-73.99756, 40.73083), new Point(-73.988135, 40.741404));  
List<Venue> venues = 
    template.find(new Query(Criteria.where("location").withinBox(box)), Venue.class);

To find venues near a Point, the following query can be used

Point point = new Point(-73.99171, 40.738868);
List<Venue> venues = 
    template.find(new Query(Criteria.where("location").near(point).maxDistance(0.01)), Venue.class);

To find venues near a Point using spherical coordines the following query can be used

Point point = new Point(-73.99171, 40.738868);
List<Venue> venues = 
    template.find(new Query(
        Criteria.where("location").nearSphere(point).maxDistance(0.003712240453784)), 
        Venue.class);

Point location = new Point(-73.99171, 40.738868);
NearQuery query = NearQuery.near(location).maxDistance(new Distance(10, Metrics.MILES));

GeoResults<Restaurant> = operations.geoNear(query, Restaurant.class);

To understand how to perform Map-Reduce operations an example from the book 'MongoDB - The definitive guide' is used. In this example we will create three documents that have the values [a,b], [b,c], and [c,d] respectfully. The values in each document are associated with the key 'x' as shown below. For this example assume these documents are in the collection named "jmr1".

{ "_id" : ObjectId("4e5ff893c0277826074ec533"), "x" : [ "a", "b" ] }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4e5ff893c0277826074ec534"), "x" : [ "b", "c" ] }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4e5ff893c0277826074ec535"), "x" : [ "c", "d" ] }

A map function that will count the occurance of each letter in the array for each document is shown below

function () {
    for (var i = 0; i < this.x.length; i++) {
        emit(this.x[i], 1);
    }
}

The reduce function that will sum up the occurance of each letter across all the documents is shown below

function (key, values) {
    var sum = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < values.length; i++)
        sum += values[i];
    return sum;
}

Executing this will result in a collection as shown below.

{ "_id" : "a", "value" : 1 }
{ "_id" : "b", "value" : 2 }
{ "_id" : "c", "value" : 2 }
{ "_id" : "d", "value" : 1 }

Assuming that the map and reduce functions are located in map.js and reduce.js and bundled in your jar so they are available on the classpath, you can execute a map-reduce operation and obtain the results as shown below

MapReduceResults<ValueObject> results = mongoOperations.mapReduce("jmr1", "classpath:map.js", "classpath:reduce.js", ValueObject.class);
for (ValueObject valueObject : results) {
  System.out.println(valueObject);
}

The output of the above code is

ValueObject [id=a, value=1.0]
ValueObject [id=b, value=2.0]
ValueObject [id=c, value=2.0]
ValueObject [id=d, value=1.0]

The MapReduceResults class implements Iterable and provides access to the raw output, as well as timing and count statistics. The ValueObject class is simply

public class ValueObject {

  private String id;
  private float value;

  public String getId() {
    return id;
  }

  public float getValue() {
    return value;
  }

  public void setValue(float value) {
    this.value = value;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return "ValueObject [id=" + id + ", value=" + value + "]";
  }
}

By default the output type of INLINE is used so you don't have to specify an output collection. To specify additional map-reduce options use an overloaded method that takes an additional MapReduceOptions argument. The class MapReduceOptions has a fluent API so adding additional options can be done in a very compact syntax. Here an example that sets the output collection to "jmr1_out". Note that setting only the output collection assumes a default output type of REPLACE.

MapReduceResults<ValueObject> results = mongoOperations.mapReduce("jmr1", "classpath:map.js", "classpath:reduce.js", 
                                                                     new MapReduceOptions().outputCollection("jmr1_out"), ValueObject.class);

There is also a static import import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.mapreduce.MapReduceOptions.options; that can be used to make the syntax slightly more compact

MapReduceResults<ValueObject> results = mongoOperations.mapReduce("jmr1", "classpath:map.js", "classpath:reduce.js", 
                                                                     options().outputCollection("jmr1_out"), ValueObject.class);

You can also specify a query to reduce the set of data that will be used to feed into the map-reduce operation. This will remove the document that contains [a,b] from consideration for map-reduce operations.

Query query = new Query(where("x").ne(new String[] { "a", "b" }));
MapReduceResults<ValueObject> results = mongoOperations.mapReduce(query, "jmr1", "classpath:map.js", "classpath:reduce.js", 
                                                                     options().outputCollection("jmr1_out"), ValueObject.class);

Note that you can specify additional limit and sort values as well on the query but not skip values.

In order to understand how group operations work the following example is used, which is somewhat artifical. For a more realistic example consult the book 'MongoDB - The definitive guide'. A collection named "group_test_collection" created with the following rows.

{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f1"), "x" : 1 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f2"), "x" : 1 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f3"), "x" : 2 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f4"), "x" : 3 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f5"), "x" : 3 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4ec1d25d41421e2015da64f6"), "x" : 3 }

We would like to group by the only field in each row, the 'x' field and aggregate the number of times each specific value of 'x' occurs. To do this we need to create an initial document that contains our count variable and also a reduce function which will increment it each time it is encountered. The Java code to execute the group operation is shown below

GroupByResults<XObject> results = mongoTemplate.group("group_test_collection", 
                                                      GroupBy.key("x").initialDocument("{ count: 0 }").reduceFunction("function(doc, prev) { prev.count += 1 }"), 
                                                      XObject.class);

The first argument is the name of the collection to run the group operation over, the second is a fluent API that specifies properties of the group operation via a GroupBy class. In this example we are using just the intialDocument and reduceFunction methods. You can also specify a key-function, as well as a finalizer as part of the fluent API. If you have multiple keys to group by, you can pass in a comma separated list of keys.

The raw results of the group operation is a JSON document that looks like this

{ 
  "retval" : [ { "x" : 1.0 , "count" : 2.0} , 
               { "x" : 2.0 , "count" : 1.0} , 
               { "x" : 3.0 , "count" : 3.0} ] , 
  "count" : 6.0 , 
  "keys" : 3 , 
  "ok" : 1.0
}

The document under the "retval" field is mapped onto the third argument in the group method, in this case XObject which is shown below.

public class XObject {

  private float x;

  private float count;


  public float getX() {
    return x;
  }

  public void setX(float x) {
    this.x = x;
  }

  public float getCount() {
    return count;
  }

  public void setCount(float count) {
    this.count = count;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return "XObject [x=" + x + " count = " + count + "]";
  }
}

You can also obtain tha raw result as a DbObject by calling the method getRawResults on the GroupByResults class.

There is an additional method overload of the group method on MongoOperations which lets you specify a Criteria object for selecting a subset of the rows. An example which uses a Criteria object, with some syntax sugar using static imports, as well as referencing a key-function and reduce function javascript files via a Spring Resource string is shown below.

import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.mapreduce.GroupBy.keyFunction;
import static org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.query.Criteria.where;

GroupByResults<XObject> results = mongoTemplate.group(where("x").gt(0), 
                                        "group_test_collection", 
                                        keyFunction("classpath:keyFunction.js").initialDocument("{ count: 0 }").reduceFunction("classpath:groupReduce.js"), XObject.class);

An example implementation of the Converter that converts from a Person object to a com.mongodb.DBObject is shown below

import org.springframework.core.convert.converter.Converter;

import com.mongodb.BasicDBObject;
import com.mongodb.DBObject;

public class PersonWriteConverter implements Converter<Person, DBObject> {

  public DBObject convert(Person source) {
    DBObject dbo = new BasicDBObject();
    dbo.put("_id", source.getId());
    dbo.put("name", source.getFirstName());
    dbo.put("age", source.getAge());
    return dbo;
  }
}

An example implemention of a Converter that converts from a DBObject ot a Person object is shownn below

public class PersonReadConverter implements Converter<DBObject, Person> {

  public Person convert(DBObject source) {
    Person p = new Person((ObjectId) source.get("_id"), (String) source.get("name"));
    p.setAge((Integer) source.get("age"));
    return p;
  }
}

The Mongo Spring namespace provides a convenience way to register Spring Converters with the MappingMongoConverter. The configuration snippet below shows how to manually register converter beans as well as configuring the wrapping MappingMongoConverter into a MongoTemplate.

<mongo:db-factory dbname="database"/>

<mongo:mapping-converter>
  <mongo:custom-converters>
    <mongo:converter ref="readConverter"/>
    <mongo:converter>
      <bean class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.test.PersonWriteConverter"/>
    </mongo:converter>
  </mongo:custom-converters>
</mongo:mapping-converter>

<bean id="readConverter" class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.test.PersonReadConverter"/>

<bean id="mongoTemplate" class="org.springframework.data.mongodb.core.MongoTemplate">
  <constructor-arg name="mongoDbFactory" ref="mongoDbFactory"/>
  <constructor-arg name="mongoConverter" ref="mappingConverter"/>
</bean>

You can also use the base-package attribute of the custom-converters element to enable classpath scanning for all Converter and GenericConverter implementations below the given package.

<mongo:mapping-converter>
  <mongo:custom-converters base-package="com.acme.**.converters" />
</mongo:mapping-converter>

Generally we inspect the Converter implementations for the source and target types they convert from and to. Depending on whether one of those is a type MongoDB can handle natively we will register the converter instance as reading or writing one. Have a look at the following samples:

// Write converter as only the target type is one Mongo can handle natively
class MyConverter implements Converter<Person, String> { … }

// Read converter as only the source type is one Mongo can handle natively
class MyConverter implements Converter<String, Person> { … }

In case you write a Converter whose source and target type are native Mongo types there's no way for us to determine whether we should consider it as reading or writing converter. Registering the converter instance as both might lead to unwanted results then. E.g. a Converter<String, Long> is ambiguous although it probably does not make sense to try to convert all Strings into Longs when writing. To be generally able to force the infrastructure to register a converter for one way only we provide @ReadingConverter as well as @WritingConverter to be used at the converter implementation.

We can create an index on a collection to improve query performance.

mongoTemplate.indexOps(Person.class).ensureIndex(new Index().on("name",Order.ASCENDING));        

You can create both standard indexes and geospatial indexes using the classes IndexDefinition and GeoSpatialIndex respectfully. For example, given the Venue class defined in a previous section, you would declare a geospatial query as shown below

mongoTemplate.indexOps(Venue.class).ensureIndex(new GeospatialIndex("location"));

The IndexOperations interface has the method getIndexInfo that returns a list of IndexInfo objects. This contains all the indexes defined on the collectcion. Here is an example that defines an index on the Person class that has age property.

template.indexOps(Person.class).ensureIndex(new Index().on("age", Order.DESCENDING).unique(Duplicates.DROP));

List<IndexInfo> indexInfoList = template.indexOps(Person.class).getIndexInfo();

// Contains
// [IndexInfo [fieldSpec={_id=ASCENDING}, name=_id_, unique=false, dropDuplicates=false, sparse=false], 
//  IndexInfo [fieldSpec={age=DESCENDING}, name=age_-1, unique=true, dropDuplicates=true, sparse=false]]

It's time to look at some code examples showing how to use the MongoTemplate. First we look at creating our first collection.

DBCollection collection = null;
if (!mongoTemplate.getCollectionNames().contains("MyNewCollection")) {
    collection = mongoTemplate.createCollection("MyNewCollection");
}

mongoTemplate.dropCollection("MyNewCollection");