Indexes

The index manager lists a collection’s indexes with their keys, type, options, size and usage. You can hide, unhide and drop indexes, and create every kind of index from a form that shows the exact createIndex command as you fill it in.

Open the index manager

• Choose Indexes from a collection’s menu in the explorer, or Manage indexes on its Indexes folder or on an index.
• Choose Tools › Indexes in the collection view.

Views have no indexes, so they have no index manager.

The index list

Column	Shows
Name	The index name.
Keys	The key pattern.
Type	Badges such as TTL, partial, unique or sparse.
Options	The index options.
Size	The index size.
Usage	Operations that used the index since its counter started (hover for the date).
Hidden	Whether the index is hidden.

Hide makes the server keep an index but stop using it; Unhide brings it back. Drop… shows the dropIndex command and asks before it runs. The _id_ index has no buttons. Refresh reads the list again.

Create an index

1. Choose Create index….
2. Pick a kind of index: Single field, Compound, TTL, Partial, Text, 2dsphere, Hashed or Wildcard. The kind fills in the form; you can change it after.
3. Under Keys, enter each field and its type: 1 (ascending), -1 (descending), text, 2dsphere, 2d or hashed.
4. Fill in the options you need (see below).
5. Check the command under the form, for example db.getSiblingDB('catalog').products.createIndex({ addedAt: 1 }, { expireAfterSeconds: 3600 }).
6. Choose Create index.

Option	What it does
Name (optional)	The index name. Without one, the server names it from the keys.
TTL seconds (expireAfterSeconds)	Deletes documents this many seconds after the date in the key.
Default language (text)	The language of a text index.
Unique	Refuses duplicate keys.
Sparse	Leaves out documents without the indexed field.
Hidden (built, not used)	Builds the index hidden.
Partial filter expression	Indexes only the documents that match, such as { status: { $eq: 'open' } }.
Collation	Language rules for string comparison, such as { locale: 'en', strength: 2 }.
Wildcard projection ($**)	Which fields a wildcard index covers.
Text weights	The weight of each field in a text index.

Production connections

On a production connection, or one that confirms writes, creating, hiding and unhiding an index ask first and show the command. Dropping an index asks on every connection. A read-only connection cannot change indexes.

Related

• Explain
• Schema analysis
• Explorer