How to access a collection in MongoDB using Python?

MongoDB is a cross-platform, document-oriented database that works on the concept of collections and documents. MongoDB offers high speed, high availability, and high scalability.

Accessing a Collection

1) Getting a list of collection: For getting a list of a MongoDB database’s collections list_collection_names() method is used. This method returns a list of collections.
Syntax:

list_collection_names()

Example:

Sample Database:

Python3

from pymongo import MongoClient


# create an client instance of the
# MongoDB class
mo_c = MongoClient()

# create an instance of 'some_database'
db = mo_c.GFG

# get a list of a MongoDB database's
# collections
collections = db.list_collection_names()
print ("collections:", collections, "\n")

Output:

collections: ['Geeks'] 

2) Check if the collection exist or not: To check if the collection attribute exists for the database use hasattr() method. It returns true if the collection is in database otherwise returns false. 

Syntax: hasattr(db, ‘collectionname’)

Parameters:
db: It is database object. 
collectionname: It is the name of the collection. 

Example:

Python3

from pymongo import MongoClient


# create an client instance of
# the MongoDB class
mo_c = MongoClient()

# create an instance of 'some_database'
db = mo_c.GFG

# check collection is exists or not
print(hasattr(db, 'Geeks'))

Output:

True

3) Accessing a Collection: To access a MongoDB collection name use the below syntax. 

Syntax:

database_object.Collectionname
or
database_object["Collectionname"]

Note: Database_object[“Collectioname”] can be useful in the case where the name of the collection contains a space in between them i.e. in cases like database_object[“Collection name”].
Example:

Python3

from pymongo import MongoClient


# create an client instance of
# the MongoDB class
mo_c = MongoClient()

# create an instance of 'some_database'
db = mo_c.GFG

col1 = db["gfg"]

print ("Collection:", col1)

Output:

Collection: Collection(Database(MongoClient(host=[‘localhost:27017’], document_class=dict, tz_aware=False, connect=True), ‘GFG’), ‘gfg’)