The Collection.remove() function is for removing documents in a collection, similar to the DELETE statement for an SQL database. It takes a search condition string (SearchConditionStr) as a parameter to specify the documents that should be removed from the collection (a detailed explanation of the SearchConditionStr can be found in Section 4.3.2, “Collection.find()”). remove() returns an error if no search condition string is provided, or if an empty string is provided. All documents in the collection are removed if any expression that evaluates to true without matching any document (for example, “true” or “_id IS NOT NULL”) is passed as the search condition string.

The following methods can be chained to the remove() method to configure the deletion:

Parameter binding using bind() is also supported, and the execute() function triggers the actual execution of the remove operation. The following example shows how to use the Collection.remove() function. It assumes some documents have been added to the collection as illustrated by the code example in Section 4.3.1, “Collection.add()”:

MySQL Shell JavaScript Code

// Use the collection 'my_collection'
var myColl = db.getCollection('my_collection');

// Remove documents by criteria
 myColl.remove('name like :name AND age < :age').
  limit(1).bind('name','N%').bind('age', 60).execute();

MySQL Shell Python Code

# Use the collection 'my_collection'
myColl = db.get_collection('my_collection')

# Remove documents by criteria
myColl.remove('name like :name AND age < :age') \
  .limit(1).bind('name','N%').bind('age', 60).execute()
	    

Node.js JavaScript Code

// Use the collection 'my_collection'
var myColl = db.getCollection('my_collection');

// Remove documents by criteria
myColl
  .remove('name like :name && age < :age')
  .limit(1)
  .bind({ name: 'N%', age: 60 })
  .execute();

C# Code

// Use the collection "my_collection"
var myColl = db.GetCollection("my_collection");

// Remove documents by criteria
myColl.Remove("name like :name AND age < :age").Limit(1).Bind("name","N%").Bind("age", 60).Execute();

Python Code

# Use the collection "my_collection"
my_coll = my_schema.get_collection('my_collection')

# Remove documents by criteria
my_coll.remove("name like :name AND age < :age").limit(1).bind("name","N%").bind("age", 60).execute();

Java Code

// Use the collection 'my_collection'
Collection myColl = db.getCollection("my_collection");

// Remove documents by criteria 
myColl.remove("name like :name AND age < :age").limit(1)
  .bind("name","N%").bind("age", 60).execute();
 

C++ Code

// Use the collection 'my_collection'
Collection myColl = db.getCollection("my_collection");

// Remove documents by criteria 
myColl.remove("name like :name AND age < :age").limit(1)
  .bind("name","N%").bind("age", 60).execute();

See also CollectionRemoveFunction for the syntax of add() in EBNF.