- Indexes >
- Hashed Indexes
Hashed Indexes¶
On this page
New in version 2.4.
Hashed indexes maintain entries with hashes of the values of the indexed field.
Hashed indexes support sharding using hashed shard keys. Hashed based sharding uses a hashed index of a field as the shard key to partition data across your sharded cluster.
Using a hashed shard key to shard a collection results in a more random distribution of data. See Deploy Sharded Cluster using Hashed Sharding for more details.
Hashing Function¶
Hashed indexes use a hashing function to compute the hash of the value of the index field. The hashing function collapses embedded documents and computes the hash for the entire value but does not support multi-key (i.e. arrays) indexes.
Tip
MongoDB automatically computes the hashes when resolving queries using hashed indexes. Applications do not need to compute hashes.
Create a Hashed Index¶
To create a hashed index, specify
hashed as the value of the index key, as in the following
example:
db.collection.createIndex( { _id: "hashed" } )
Considerations¶
MongoDB supports hashed indexes of any single field. The hashing
function collapses embedded documents and computes the hash for the entire
value, but does not support multi-key (i.e. arrays) indexes.
You may not create compound indexes that have hashed index fields
or specify a unique constraint on a hashed index; however, you can
create both a hashed index and an ascending/descending (i.e.
non-hashed) index on the same field: MongoDB will use the scalar index
for range queries.
Warning
MongoDB hashed indexes truncate floating point numbers to 64-bit integers
before hashing. For example, a hashed index would store the same
value for a field that held a value of 2.3, 2.2, and 2.9.
To prevent collisions, do not use a hashed index for floating
point numbers that cannot be reliably converted to 64-bit
integers (and then back to floating point). MongoDB hashed indexes do
not support floating point values larger than 253.