Navigation
This version of the documentation is archived and no longer supported.

renameCollection

renameCollection

The renameCollection command is an administrative command that changes the name of an existing collection. You specify collections to renameCollection in the form of a complete namespace, which includes the database name. To rename a collection, issue the renameCollection command against the admin database in the form:

{ renameCollection: <source-namespace>, to: <target-namespace>[, dropTarget: <boolean> ] }

The dropTarget argument is optional.

If you specify a collection to the to argument in a different database, the renameCollection command will copy the collection to the new database and then drop the source collection.

Parameters:
  • source-namespace – Specifies the complete namespace of the collection to rename.
  • to (string) – Specifies the new namespace of the collection.
  • dropTarget (boolean) – Optional. If true, mongod will drop the target of renameCollection prior to renaming the collection.
Exception:
  • 10026 – Raised if the source namespace does not exist.
  • 10027 – Raised if the target namespace exists and dropTarget is either false or unspecified.
  • 15967 – Raised if the target namespace is an invalid collection name.

You can use renameCollection in production environments; however:

Warning

renameCollection will fail if target is the name of an existing collection and you do not specify dropTarget: true.

If the renameCollection operation does not complete the target collection and indexes will not be usable and will require manual intervention to clean up.

The shell helper db.collection.renameCollection() provides a simpler interface to using this command within a database. The following is equivalent to the previous example:

db.source-namespace.renameCollection( "target" )

Warning

You cannot use renameCollection with sharded collections.

Warning

This command obtains a global write lock and will block other operations until it has completed.