Bulk Write Operations

This tutorial explains how to take advantage of PyMongo’s bulk write operation features. Executing write operations in batches reduces the number of network round trips, increasing write throughput.

Bulk Insert

New in version 2.6.

A batch of documents can be inserted by passing a list to the insert_many() method. PyMongo will automatically split the batch into smaller sub-batches based on the maximum message size accepted by MongoDB, supporting very large bulk insert operations.

>>> import pymongo
>>> db = pymongo.MongoClient().bulk_example
>>> db.test.insert_many([{'i': i} for i in range(10000)]).inserted_ids
[...]
>>> db.test.count()
10000

Mixed Bulk Write Operations

New in version 2.7.

PyMongo also supports executing mixed bulk write operations. A batch of insert, update, and remove operations can be executed together using the bulk write operations API.

Ordered Bulk Write Operations

Ordered bulk write operations are batched and sent to the server in the order provided for serial execution. The return value is an instance of BulkWriteResult describing the type and count of operations performed.

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> from pymongo import InsertOne, DeleteMany, ReplaceOne, UpdateOne
>>> result = db.test.bulk_write([
...     DeleteMany({}),  # Remove all documents from the previous example.
...     InsertOne({'_id': 1}),
...     InsertOne({'_id': 2}),
...     InsertOne({'_id': 3}),
...     UpdateOne({'_id': 1}, {'$set': {'foo': 'bar'}}),
...     UpdateOne({'_id': 4}, {'$inc': {'j': 1}}, upsert=True),
...     ReplaceOne({'j': 1}, {'j': 2})])
>>> pprint(result.bulk_api_result)
{'nInserted': 3,
 'nMatched': 2,
 'nModified': 2,
 'nRemoved': 10000,
 'nUpserted': 1,
 'upserted': [{u'_id': 4, u'index': 5}],
 'writeConcernErrors': [],
 'writeErrors': []}

Warning

nModified is only reported by MongoDB 2.6 and later. When connected to an earlier server version, or in certain mixed version sharding configurations, PyMongo omits this field from the results of a bulk write operation.

The first write failure that occurs (e.g. duplicate key error) aborts the remaining operations, and PyMongo raises BulkWriteError. The details attibute of the exception instance provides the execution results up until the failure occurred and details about the failure - including the operation that caused the failure.

>>> from pymongo import InsertOne, DeleteOne, ReplaceOne
>>> from pymongo.errors import BulkWriteError
>>> requests = [
...     ReplaceOne({'j': 2}, {'i': 5}),
...     InsertOne({'_id': 4}),  # Violates the unique key constraint on _id.
...     DeleteOne({'i': 5})]
>>> try:
...     db.test.bulk_write(requests)
... except BulkWriteError as bwe:
...     pprint(bwe.details)
...
{'nInserted': 0,
 'nMatched': 1,
 'nModified': 1,
 'nRemoved': 0,
 'nUpserted': 0,
 'upserted': [],
 'writeConcernErrors': [],
 'writeErrors': [{u'code': 11000,
                  u'errmsg': u'...E11000...duplicate key error...',
                  u'index': 1,
                  u'op': {'_id': 4}}]}

Unordered Bulk Write Operations

Unordered bulk write operations are batched and sent to the server in arbitrary order where they may be executed in parallel. Any errors that occur are reported after all operations are attempted.

In the next example the first and third operations fail due to the unique constraint on _id. Since we are doing unordered execution the second and fourth operations succeed.

>>> requests = [
...     InsertOne({'_id': 1}),
...     DeleteOne({'_id': 2}),
...     InsertOne({'_id': 3}),
...     ReplaceOne({'_id': 4}, {'i': 1})]
>>> try:
...     db.test.bulk_write(requests, ordered=False)
... except BulkWriteError as bwe:
...     pprint(bwe.details)
...
{'nInserted': 0,
 'nMatched': 1,
 'nModified': 1,
 'nRemoved': 1,
 'nUpserted': 0,
 'upserted': [],
 'writeConcernErrors': [],
 'writeErrors': [{u'code': 11000,
                  u'errmsg': u'...E11000...duplicate key error...',
                  u'index': 0,
                  u'op': {'_id': 1}},
                 {u'code': 11000,
                  u'errmsg': u'...E11000...duplicate key error...',
                  u'index': 2,
                  u'op': {'_id': 3}}]}

Write Concern

Bulk operations are executed with the write_concern of the collection they are executed against. Write concern errors (e.g. wtimeout) will be reported after all operations are attempted, regardless of execution order.

::

>>> from pymongo import WriteConcern
>>> coll = db.get_collection(
...     'test', write_concern=WriteConcern(w=3, wtimeout=1))
>>> try:
...     coll.bulk_write([InsertOne({'a': i}) for i in range(4)])
... except BulkWriteError as bwe:
...     pprint(bwe.details)
...
{'nInserted': 4,
 'nMatched': 0,
 'nModified': 0,
 'nRemoved': 0,
 'nUpserted': 0,
 'upserted': [],
 'writeConcernErrors': [{u'code': 64...
                         u'errInfo': {u'wtimeout': True},
                         u'errmsg': u'waiting for replication timed out'}],
 'writeErrors': []}