Python MongoDB Delete Document

Python provides two useful methods to delete documents in a collection.

The delete_one() method is used to delete the first occurrence of the document (It is has more than one document in the result).

The delete_many() method is used to delete many documents in the result.

Both methods takes one arguments, which is:

1. Query Object :- A query objective define which document to delete

We will take a sample collection called "emp" from "mydatabase" and it contains four columns ("id", "name", "city", and "salary") and five documents.

Delete One Document - The delete_one() Method

We utilise the delete_one() method to remove a document.

Note : Only the first occurrence is erased when the query discovers more than one document.

Example :- Delete the "berlin" city of the document :

import pymongo
myclient = pymongo.MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
mydb = myclient["mydatabase"]
mycol = mydb["emp"]
myquery = { "city": "berlin" }
mycol.delete_one(myquery)
for x in mycol.find():
  print(x)

Output :-

Note: There are three documents are selected by our query. But it deleted only the first document.

Use the delete_many() function to remove more than one document.

Example :- Delete all documents where city="berlin" and salary < 6500 :

import pymongo
myclient = pymongo.MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
mydb = myclient["mydatabase"]
mycol = mydb["emp"]
myquery = {"city": "berlin", "salary": {"$lt" : 6500} }
cnt = mycol.delete_many(myquery)
print(cnt.deleted_count, "documents deleted")
for x in mycol.find():
  print(x)

Output :-

Pass empty query objects on the delete_many() method to remove all documents in a collection :

Example :- Remove all documents in the collection "emp" :

import pymongo
myclient = pymongo.MongoClient("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
mydb = myclient["mydatabase"]
mycol = mydb["emp"]
x = mycol.delete_many({})
print(x.deleted_count, "documents deleted")

Output :-