Importing and Exporting MongoDB Databases

Exporting from MongoDB

To export the database, simply tell mongodump which database (or collection) you want to export, and where to export it to. Mine was the pets database, so my command looks like this:

mongodump -d pets -o petsbackup

This dumps the pets database into the petsbackup directory. Take a look at what we have in that directory now:

pets
├── animals.bson
└── system.indexes.bson

0 directories, 2 files

The only collection in my pets database is the animals collection, however you'll see a .bson file for each collection in your database, plus the system indexes collection. It is up to you whether you want to take individual collections, or a whole database, but bear in mind that your choice will dictate whether you get information about indexes etc when you import the data elsewhere.

Importing to MongoDB

To import, simply use the mongorestore command, which accepts either a single .bson file representing a collection, or a directory containing multiple files. Here's my example:

mongorestore -d pets /path/to/pets

You can specify any database name and path to files you like, so for taking backups or restoring additional copies of a database, this can be really handy. The mongo commands are well-documented and I found them easy to work with - hopefully this helps you work with them too!