I have MongoDB version 5.0.7 installed in the default location in my PC running on Windows 10 Pro. I have a database named mydb which contains a collection called products. I want to copy the mydb database into a new database called newdb. For that, I’m trying to use mongodump and mongorestore commands as mentioned here. While doing so, although mongodump is executing and creating the dump file properly, the mongorestore command fails everytime generating a duplicate key error.
The command I use to dump the mydb database to an archive:
mongodump --archive="mongodump-mydb" --db=mydb
The command I use to restore the database from the dump to a new database:
mongorestore --archive="mongodump-mydb" --nsFrom='mydb.*' --nsTo='newdb.*'
The error message that I get:
2022-04-17T19:09:04.136+0530 preparing collections to restore from
2022-04-17T19:09:04.146+0530 reading metadata for mydb.products from archive 'mongodump-mydb'
2022-04-17T19:09:04.150+0530 restoring to existing collection mydb.products without dropping
2022-04-17T19:09:04.157+0530 restoring mydb.products from archive 'mongodump-mydb'
2022-04-17T19:09:04.209+0530 continuing through error: E11000 duplicate key error collection: mydb.products index: _id_ dup key: { _id: ObjectId('625974fe025923931b6e5e7f') }
2022-04-17T19:09:04.211+0530 continuing through error: E11000 duplicate key error collection: mydb.products index: _id_ dup key: { _id: ObjectId('62597508025923931b6e5e80') }
2022-04-17T19:09:04.211+0530 continuing through error: E11000 duplicate key error collection: mydb.products index: _id_ dup key: { _id: ObjectId('62597508025923931b6e5e81') }
2022-04-17T19:09:04.211+0530 finished restoring mydb.products (0 documents, 3 failures)
2022-04-17T19:09:04.211+0530 no indexes to restore for collection mydb.products
2022-04-17T19:09:04.211+0530 0 document(s) restored successfully. 3 document(s) failed to restore.
Surprisingly, it seems to restore the collection products in mydb database instead of newdb. As mydb already contains the products collection having rows of documents with unique ids, it’s creating a clash generating the duplicate key error.
As an alternative, while executing mongorestore I put the name of the new database in both --nsFrom and --nsTo arguments to check if it makes some difference:
mongorestore --archive="mongodump-mydb" --nsFrom='newdb.*' --nsTo='newdb.*'
Yet, it generates the same error.
Somehow, mongo seems to be ignoring the new database argument altogether. Why is this happening and how do I solve this problem? Because, copying existing data from a database into a new one is a common requirement of my project, and if I can’t restore my data from dump, all it takes is a crash to loose my records forever. So please help me in resolving this issue.
Regards
I found the reason. The problem lies in using single quotes while passing the values of --nsFrom and --nsTo arguments. While doing so, in some environments, mongo keeps on restoring the dump to the existing database instead of the new one, thus creating a clash between the existing data and the data being restored generating the “duplicate key error”. When you encounter such a scenario, either use double quotes to pass the values of --nsFrom and --nsTo arguments or don’t use any quote at all.
This definitely seems to be a bug in MongoDB Server system or its syntax. MongoDB development team must take note of this and rectify it in the next update.