mongovi

mongovi is a command line interface for MongoDB. It can be used interactively and non-interactive and is made to be ergonomic for ad hoc querying and manipulation of documents in a database.

Features:

easy integration into shell pipelines by reading and writing MongoDB Extended JSON via stdin/stdout
move around databases and collections using the common cd idiom
easy and secure MongoDB authentication using ~/.mongovi
emacs-like and vi-like key bindings
tab-completion of commands, databases and collections

Usage examples

Interactive

Open database raboof and collection bar:

$ mongovi raboof/bar
/raboof/bar>

Change collection from bar to qux and insert a document:

/raboof/bar> cd ../qux
/raboof/qux> insert { _id: "doc1", foo: "bar" }

Query for all documents with foo equal to bar:

/raboof/qux> find { foo: "bar" }
{ "_id" : "doc1", "foo" : "bar" }

Quick search on _id:

/raboof/qux> find doc1
{ "_id" : "doc1", "foo" : "bar" }

All commands can be abbreviated to the shortest non-ambiguous form, so find can be abbreviated to f since no other command starts with an f.

Use an aggregation query to filter on documents with foo equal to bar. Note that the aggregate command can be abbreviated to a.

/raboof/qux> a [{ $project: { foo: true } }, { $match: { foo: "bar" } }]
{ "_id" : "doc1", "foo" : "bar" }

Non-interactive

Let's start with listing all databases:

$ echo ls | mongovi
db1
db2

Insert two documents into collection collx of database db1 via stdin using a POSIX shell here-document:

$ mongovi db1/collx <<'eof'
insert { _id: "doc1", price: 25, foo: "bar", x: true }
insert { _id: "doc2", price: 10, foo: "bar", qux: "raboof" }
eof

Now query for all documents with foo equal to bar in the collection collx in database db1:

$ echo 'find { foo: "bar" }' | mongovi db1/collx
{ "_id" : "doc1", "price" : 25, "foo" : "bar", "x" : true }
{ "_id" : "doc2", "price" : 10, "foo" : "bar", "qux" : "raboof" }

A more powerful example in which we use jq(1) to filter out the price of the JSON objects output by mongovi. Please note that all commands can be abbreviated to the shortest non-ambiguous form, so find can be abbreviated to f since no other command starts with an f.

$ echo 'f { foo: "bar" }' | mongovi db1/collx | jq -c 'del(.price)'
{"_id":"doc1","foo":"bar","x":true}
{"_id":"doc2","foo":"bar","qux":"raboof"}

And at last it should be noted that mongovi can batch insert by reading one JSON object per line from stdin when the -i switch is used. Let's copy all objects where foo is bar to another database/collection with the price attribute stripped using jq(1):

$ echo 'f { foo: "bar" }' | mongovi db1/collx | jq -c 'del(.price)' | mongovi -i db2/colly
inserted 2 documents

vi key bindings

vi key bindings can be enabled with a standard editline command. Just make sure your editrc(5) contains bind -v:

echo 'bind -v' >> ~/.editrc

Config file

If the file ~/.mongovi exists, the first line is read and expected to be a valid mongodb connection string, possibly containing a username and password.

Installation

Build requirements

C compiler (with C17 support)
make
libedit
mongo-c-driver

Run-time requirements

Pre-compiled .deb package for Debian and Ubuntu

Download mongovi_2.0.0-1_amd64.deb, verify the checksum and install.

$ sha256sum mongovi_2.0.0-1_amd64.deb
# only proceed if the following checksum matches
9da949ace6304479c7af15cb1b37b713548556890743b860c8d3b8c16cc096d4  mongovi_2.0.0-1_amd64.deb
$ sudo apt install libmongoc-1.0-0 libedit2
$ sudo dpkg -i mongovi_2.0.0-1_amd64.deb

Compile latest version on Debian/Ubuntu

(tested on Debian 9, 11 and Ubuntu 22.04)

First install the build requirements.

% sudo apt install make gcc libmongoc-dev libedit-dev

Then clone, compile and install mongovi:

$ git clone https://github.com/timkuijsten/mongovi.git
$ cd mongovi
$ make
$ sudo make install

Compile on macOS

(tested on macOS 11.7)

Download, verify, compile and install the mongo-c-driver version 1.23.2 (which needs cmake).

% cd ~
% curl -sLO https://github.com/mongodb/mongo-c-driver/releases/download/1.23.2/mongo-c-driver-1.23.2.tar.gz
% shasum -a 256 mongo-c-driver-1.23.2.tar.gz
123c358827eea07cd76a31c40281bb1c81b6744f6587c96d0cf217be8b1234e3  mongo-c-driver-1.23.2.tar.gz
% tar zxf mongo-c-driver-1.23.2.tar.gz
% cd mongo-c-driver-1.23.2
% mkdir cmake-build
% cd cmake-build
% cmake -DENABLE_AUTOMATIC_INIT_AND_CLEANUP=OFF ..
% make
% sudo make install

Then clone, compile and install mongovi:

% cd ~
% git clone https://github.com/timkuijsten/mongovi.git
% cd mongovi
% make
% sudo make install

Tests

$ make test

Documentation

For documentation please refer to the manpage.

History

This project is a continuation of node-mongovi. node-mongovi always had a limited set of key bindings and suffered from a lack of maintenance which became more apparent with every new node and mongodb release. Furthermore, nodejs shouldn't be a requirement for running a mongo cli.

License

ISC

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

jsmn.h and jsmn.c are part of JSMN which is distributed under the MIT license.