cursor.collation()¶

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Definition¶

cursor.collation(<collation document>)¶

New in version 3.4.

Specifies the collation for the cursor returned by the db.collection.find(). To use, append to the db.collection.find().

The cursor.collation() accepts the following collation document:

{
   locale: <string>,
   caseLevel: <boolean>,
   caseFirst: <string>,
   strength: <int>,
   numericOrdering: <boolean>,
   alternate: <string>,
   maxVariable: <string>,
   backwards: <boolean>
}

When specifying collation, the locale field is mandatory; all other collation fields are optional. For descriptions of the fields, see Collation Document.

Field Type Description

locale

string

The ICU locale. See Supported Languages and Locales for a list of supported locales.

To specify simple binary comparison, specify locale value of "simple".

strength

integer

Optional. The level of comparison to perform. Corresponds to ICU Comparison Levels. Possible values are:

Value	Description
1	Primary level of comparison. Collation performs comparisons of the base characters only, ignoring other differences such as diacritics and case.
2	Secondary level of comparison. Collation performs comparisons up to secondary differences, such as diacritics. That is, collation performs comparisons of base characters (primary differences) and diacritics (secondary differences). Differences between base characters takes precedence over secondary differences.
3	Tertiary level of comparison. Collation performs comparisons up to tertiary differences, such as case and letter variants. That is, collation performs comparisons of base characters (primary differences), diacritics (secondary differences), and case and variants (tertiary differences). Differences between base characters takes precedence over secondary differences, which takes precedence over tertiary differences. This is the default level.
4	Quaternary Level. Limited for specific use case to consider punctuation when levels 1-3 ignore punctuation or for processing Japanese text.
5	Identical Level. Limited for specific use case of tie breaker.

See ICU Collation: Comparison Levels for details.

caseLevel

boolean

Optional. Flag that determines whether to include case comparison at strength level 1 or 2.

If true, include case comparison; i.e.

When used with strength:1, collation compares base characters and case.
When used with strength:2, collation compares base characters, diacritics (and possible other secondary differences) and case.

If false, do not include case comparison at level 1 or 2. The default is false.

For more information, see ICU Collation: Case Level.

caseFirst

string

Optional. A flag that determines sort order of case differences during tertiary level comparisons.

Possible values are:

Value	Description
“upper”	Uppercase sorts before lowercase.
“lower”	Lowercase sorts before uppercase.
“off”	Default value. Similar to `"lower"` with slight differences. See http://userguide.icu-project.org/collation/customization for details of differences.

numericOrdering

boolean

Optional. Flag that determines whether to compare numeric strings as numbers or as strings.

If true, compare as numbers; i.e. "10" is greater than "2".

If false, compare as strings; i.e. "10" is less than "2".

Default is false.

alternate

string

Optional. Field that determines whether collation should consider whitespace and punctuation as base characters for purposes of comparison.

Possible values are:

Value	Description
`"non-ignorable"`	Whitespace and punctuation are considered base characters.
`"shifted"`	Whitespace and punctuation are not considered base characters and are only distinguished at strength levels greater than 3.

See ICU Collation: Comparison Levels for more information.

Default is "non-ignorable".

maxVariable

string

Optional. Field that determines up to which characters are considered ignorable when alternate: "shifted". Has no effect if alternate: "non-ignorable"

Possible values are:

Value	Description
`"punct"`	Both whitespaces and punctuation are “ignorable”, i.e. not considered base characters.
`"space"`	Whitespace are “ignorable”, i.e. not considered base characters.

backwards

boolean

Optional. Flag that determines whether strings with diacritics sort from back of the string, such as with some French dictionary ordering.

If true, compare from back to front.

If false, compare from front to back.

The default value is false.

normalization

boolean

Optional. Flag that determines whether to check if text require normalization and to perform normalization. Generally, majority of text does not require this normalization processing.

If true, check if fully normalized and perform normaliztion to compare text.

If false, does not check.

The default value is false.

See http://userguide.icu-project.org/collation/concepts#TOC-Normalization for details.

Examples¶

Consider a collection foo with the following documents:

{ "_id" : 1, "x" : "a" }
{ "_id" : 2, "x" : "A" }
{ "_id" : 3, "x" : "á" }

The following operation specifies a query filter of x: "a". The operation also includes a collation option with locale: "en_US" (US English locale) and strength: 1 (compare base characters only; i.e. ignore case and diacritics):

db.foo.find( { x: "a" } ).collation( { locale: "en_US", strength: 1 } )

The operation returns the following documents:

{ "_id" : 1, "x" : "a" }
{ "_id" : 2, "x" : "A" }
{ "_id" : 3, "x" : "á" }

If you do not specify the collation, i.e. db.collection.find( { x: "a" } ), the query would only match the following document:

db.foo.find( { x: "a" } )

You can chain other cursor methods, such as cursor.sort() and cursor.count(), to cursor.collation():

db.collection.find({...}).collation({...}).sort({...});
db.collection.find({...}).collation({...}).count();

Note

You cannot specify multiple collations for an operation. For example, you cannot specify different collations per field, or if performing a find with a sort, you cannot use one collation for the find and another for the sort.

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