mongoimport choosing field type

Question

When importing data from file (csv in my case) mongoimport automatically choose data type for each field.

Is it possible to choose data type manually for specific field? I encountered situation, when in my file there are phone numbers, which I want and which I should treat as strings, but mongoimport (quite properly) treat those phone numbers as a numbers (NumberLong).

Answer 1

When importing CSV/TSV to mongodb, the option --columnsHaveTypes can help to define the columnstypes. But the document seems very unclear. I tried several times until finally did succeed. You should add option --columnsHaveTypes and change every column after --fields and remember using "\" before "(" and ")". for example, change:

mongoimport -h foohost -d bardb -c fooc --type tsv --fields col1,col2,col3 --file path/to/file.txt

into

mongoimport -h foohost -d bardb -c fooc --type tsv --fields col1.int32\(\),col2.double\(\),col3.string\(\) --columnsHaveTypes --file path/to/file.txt

Answer 2

What you can do is import these data using CSV and then run the update statement on the existing data in mongo db to convert it into the format that you want.

Answer 3

Now version 3.4 onward mongoimport supports specifying the field types explicitly while importing the data. See below link: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/program/mongoimport/#cmdoption--columnsHaveTypes