Python MongoDB create_index Query (original) (raw)
Last Updated : 12 Jul, 2025
MongoDBis an open-source document-oriented database. MongoDB stores data in the form of key-value pairs and is a NoSQL database program. The term NoSQL means non-relational.
Indexing
Indexing helps in querying the documents efficiently. It stores the value of a specific field or set of fields which are ordered by the value of the field as specified in the index.
PyMongo contains a function create_index() to explicitly create index. By default, _id is the only index present in the collection. This function can accept either a key or a list of (key, direction) pairs.
Syntax:
create_index(keys, session=None, **kwargs)
Let's look at some examples.
Example 1:
Sample Database:
Python3 `
from pymongo import MongoClient
creation of MongoClient
client = MongoClient()
Connect with the portnumber and host
client = MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
Access database
mydatabase = client['GFG']
Access collection of the database
mycollection = mydatabase['College']
Before Creating index
index_list = sorted(list(mycollection.index_information())) print("Before Creating index") print(index_list)
Creating index
mycollection.create_index("student_id", unique = True)
After Creating index
index_list = sorted(list(mycollection.index_information())) print("\nAfter Creating index") print(index_list)
`
Output:
Before Creating index ['id']
After Creating index ['id', 'student_id_1']
- Here, we create an index named student_id using create_index() method. This results in two indexes in the documents _id and student_id.
- Using index_information() method, we get all the indexes in the collection,
Example 2:
Python3 `
from pymongo import MongoClient
creation of MongoClient
client = MongoClient()
Connect with the portnumber and host
client = MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
Access database
mydatabase = client['GFG']
Access collection of the database
mycollection = mydatabase['College']
record = {'_id': 4, "student_id": 873, "name": "John", "section": "A"}
mycollection.insert_one(record)
`
Output:
DuplicateKeyError Traceback (most recent call last) in 16 record = {'_id': 4, "student_id": 873, "name": "John", "section": "A"} 17 ---> 18 mycollection.insert_one(record)
DuplicateKeyError: E11000 duplicate key error collection: GFG.College index: student_id_1 dup key: { : 873 }
It raises the DuplicateKeyError as there is already a document that exists with the student_id 873 and we are trying to insert another document with the same student_id. This error occurs because we created an index on the field student_id and marked it as unique.