Data Models >
Document Validation

Document Validation¶

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Behavior
Restrictions
Bypass Document Validation
Additional Information

New in version 3.2.

MongoDB provides the capability to validate documents during updates and insertions. Validation rules are specified on a per-collection basis using the validator option, which takes a document that specifies the validation rules or expressions. Specify the expressions using any query operators, with the exception of $near, $nearSphere, $text, and $where.

Add document validation to an existing collection using the collMod command with the validator option. You can also specify document validation rules when creating a new collection using db.createCollection() with the validator option, as in the following:

db.createCollection( "contacts",
   { validator: { $or:
      [
         { phone: { $type: "string" } },
         { email: { $regex: /@mongodb\.com$/ } },
         { status: { $in: [ "Unknown", "Incomplete" ] } }
      ]
   }
} )

MongoDB also provides the validationLevel option, which determines how strictly MongoDB applies validation rules to existing documents during an update, and the validationAction option, which determines whether MongoDB should error and reject documents that violate the validation rules or warn about the violations in the log but allow invalid documents.

Behavior¶

Validation occurs during updates and inserts. When you add validation to a collection, existing documents do not undergo validation checks until modification.

Existing Documents¶

You can control how MongoDB handles existing documents using the validationLevel option.

By default, validationLevel is strict and MongoDB applies validation rules to all inserts and updates. Setting validationLevel to moderate applies validation rules to inserts and to updates to existing documents that fulfill the validation criteria. With the moderate level, updates to existing documents that do not fulfill the validation criteria are not checked for validity.

Example

Consider the following documents in a contacts collection:

{
   "_id": "125876"
   "name": "Anne",
   "phone": "+1 555 123 456",
   "city": "London",
   "status": "Complete"
},
{
   "_id": "860000",
   "name": "Ivan",
   "city": "Vancouver"
}

Issue the following command to add a validator to the contacts collection:

db.runCommand( {
   collMod: "contacts",
   validator: { $or: [ { phone: { $exists: true } }, { email: { $exists: true } } ] },
   validationLevel: "moderate"
} )

The contacts collection now has a validator with the moderate validationLevel. If you attempted to update the document with _id of 125876, MongoDB would apply validation rules since the existing document matches the criteria. In contrast, MongoDB will not apply validation rules to updates to the document with _id of 860000 as it does not meet the validation rules.

To disable validation entirely, you can set validationLevel to off.

Accept or Reject Invalid Documents¶

The validationAction option determines how MongoDB handles documents that violate the validation rules.

By default, validationAction is error and MongoDB rejects any insertion or update that violates the validation criteria. When validationAction is set to warn, MongoDB logs any violations but allows the insertion or update to proceed.

Example

The following example creates a contacts collection with a validator that specifies that inserted or updated documents should match at least one of three following conditions:

the phone field is a string
the email field matches the regular expression
the status field is either Unknown or Incomplete.

db.createCollection( "contacts",
   {
      validator: { $or:
         [
            { phone: { $type: "string" } },
            { email: { $regex: /@mongodb\.com$/ } },
            { status: { $in: [ "Unknown", "Incomplete" ] } }
         ]
      },
      validationAction: "warn"
   }
)

With the validator in place, the following insert operation fails the validation rules, but since the validationAction is warn, the write operation logs the failure and succeeds.

db.contacts.insert( { name: "Amanda", status: "Updated" } )

The log includes the full namespace of the collection and the document that failed the validation rules, as well as the time of the operation:

2015-10-15T11:20:44.260-0400 W STORAGE  [conn3] Document would fail validation collection: example.contacts doc: { _id: ObjectId('561fc44c067a5d85b96274e4'), name: "Amanda", status: "Updated" }

Restrictions¶

You cannot specify a validator for collections in the admin, local, and config databases.

You cannot specify a validator for system.* collections.

Bypass Document Validation¶

User can bypass document validation using the bypassDocumentValidation option. For a list of commands that support the bypassDocumentValidation option, see Document Validation.

For deployments that have enabled access control, to bypass document validation, the authenticated user must have bypassDocumentValidation action. The built-in roles dbAdmin and restore provide this action.