[edit] Last updated: Tue, 21 May 2013

MongoCollection::remove

(PECL mongo >=0.9.0)

MongoCollection::remove — Remove records from this collection

Description

public bool|array MongoCollection::remove ([ array $criteria = array() [, array $options = array() ]] )

Parameters

criteria

Description of records to remove.

options

Options for remove.

"w"
See WriteConcerns. The default value for MongoClient is 1.
"justOne"

Remove at most one record matching this criteria.
"fsync"
Boolean, defaults to FALSE. Forces the insert to be synced to disk before returning success. If TRUE, an acknowledged insert is implied and will override setting w to 0.
"j"
Boolean, defaults to FALSE. Forces the insert to be synced to the journal before returning success. If TRUE, an acknowledged insert is implied and will override setting w to 0.
"w"
See WriteConcerns. The default value for MongoClient is 1.
"wtimeout"
How long to wait for WriteConcern acknowledgement. The default value for MongoClient is 10000 milliseconds.
"safe"
Deprecated. Please use the WriteConcern w option.
"timeout"
Integer, defaults to MongoCursor::$timeout. If acknowledged writes are used, this sets how long (in milliseconds) for the client to wait for a database response. If the database does not respond within the timeout period, a MongoCursorTimeoutException will be thrown.

Return Values

Returns an array containing the status of the removal if the "w" option is set. Otherwise, returns TRUE.

Fields in the status array are described in the documentation for MongoCollection::insert().

Errors/Exceptions

Throws MongoCursorException if the "w" option is set and the write fails.

Throws MongoCursorTimeoutException if the "w" option is set to a value greater than one and the operation takes longer than MongoCursor::$timeout milliseconds to complete. This does not kill the operation on the server, it is a client-side timeout. The operation in MongoCollection::$wtimeout is milliseconds.

Changelog

Version	Description
1.3.0	The `options` parameter no longer accepts a boolean to signify "justOne". Instead, this now has to be done with array('justOne' => true).
1.2.11	Emits `E_DEPRECATED` when `options` is scalar.
1.2.0	Added "timeout" option.
1.0.11	Disconnects on "not master" errors if "safe" is set.
1.0.9	Added ability to pass integers to the "safe" option, which previously only accepted booleans. Added "fsync" option. The return type was changed to be an array containing error information if the "safe" option is used. Otherwise, a boolean is returned as before.
1.0.5	Changed second parameter to be an array of options. Pre-1.0.5, the second parameter was a boolean indicating the "safe" option.

Examples

Example #1 MongoCollection::remove() with justOne example


<?php

$radioactive = $db->radioactive;

// count how much more plutonium there is
$remaining = $radioactive->count(array('type' => 94));

$halflife = $remaining/2;

// remove half of it
while ($halflife > 0) {
    $radioactive->remove(array('type' => 94), array("justOne" => true));
    $halflife--;
}

?>


If you try to remove a document that doesn't exist, remove() won't throw an exception.



Even if 'w' is set to 1, remove() will return an array similar to this:



Array ( [n] => 0 [connectionId] => 10726 [err] => [ok] => 1 ) 



So, in order to see if a remove() was really successful, you need to look at [n] key.  If it's 0, that means the remove() did not remove any documents.



If remove() is successful, [n] will be > 0.

down

David Winter ¶

3 years ago


To remove a document based on its ID, you need to ensure that you pass the ID as a MongoID object rather than just a string:



<?php

$id = '4b3f272c8ead0eb19d000000';



// will not work:

$collection->remove(array('_id' => $id), true);



// will work:

$collection->remove(array('_id' => new MongoId($id)), true);

?>

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