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MongoDB: How to remove all items from a MongoDB collection

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When working with MongoDB you might have the need to remove all items from a collection.

You can do so by calling the deleteMany method of a collection, passing an empty object.

Like this:

yourcollection.deleteMany({})

Here’s a full example:

const mongo = require('mongodb').MongoClient
const url = 'mongodb://localhost:27017'
let db, jobs

mongo.connect(
  url,
  {
    useNewUrlParser: true,
    useUnifiedTopology: true
  },
  (err, client) => {
    if (err) {
      console.error(err)
      return
    }
    db = client.db('jobs')
    jobs = db.collection('jobs')

    jobs.deleteMany({})
  }
)

Lessons in this unit:

0: Introduction
1: The MongoDB basics tutorial
2: How MongoDB is different from a SQL database
3: How to insert multiple items at once in a MongoDB collection
4: ▶︎ How to remove all items from a MongoDB collection
5: How to use MongoDB with Node.js