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$slice

The $slice aggregation operator enables you to return a subset of an array by either traversing the array from the beginning or the end of the array. This is used to display a limited number of items from an array field, such as the top or bottom N items.

Parameters

Example (MongoDB Shell)

The following example demonstrates how to use $slice to return the first two favorite sweets for each chef.

Create sample documents

db.sweets.insertMany([
  { "_id" : 1, "name" : "Alvin", "favorites": [ "chocolate", "cake", "toffee", "beignets" ] },
  { "_id" : 2, "name" : "Tom", "favorites": [ "donuts", "pudding", "pie" ] },
  { "_id" : 3, "name" : "Jessica", "favorites": [ "fudge", "smores", "pudding", "cupcakes" ] },
  { "_id" : 4, "name" : "Rachel", "favorites": [ "ice cream" ] }
]);

Query example

db.sweets.aggregate([
  { $project: { _id: 0, name: 1, topTwoFavorites: { $slice: [ "$favorites", 2 ] } } }
]);

Output

[
  { name: 'Alvin', topTwoFavorites: [ 'chocolate', 'cake' ] },
  { name: 'Tom', topTwoFavorites: [ 'donuts', 'pudding' ] },
  { name: 'Jessica', topTwoFavorites: [ 'fudge', 'smores' ] },
  { name: 'Rachel', topTwoFavorites: [ 'ice cream' ] }
]

In this example, the $slice operator is used to extract the first two elements from the favorites array for each document.

Code examples

To view a code example for using the $slice command, choose the tab for the language that you want to use:

Node.js

const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');

async function example() {
  const client = await MongoClient.connect('mongodb://<username>:<password>@<cluster-endpoint>:27017/?tls=true&tlsCAFile=global-bundle.pem&replicaSet=rs0&readPreference=secondaryPreferred&retryWrites=false');
  const db = client.db('test');
  const collection = db.collection('sweets');

  const result = await collection.aggregate([
    { $project: { name: 1, topTwoFavorites: { $slice: ['$favorites', 2] } } }
  ]).toArray();

  console.log(result);
  await client.close();
}

example();

Python

from pymongo import MongoClient

def example():
    client = MongoClient('mongodb://<username>:<password>@<cluster-endpoint>:27017/?tls=true&tlsCAFile=global-bundle.pem&replicaSet=rs0&readPreference=secondaryPreferred&retryWrites=false')
    db = client['test']
    collection = db['sweets']

    result = list(collection.aggregate([
        { '$project': { 'name': 1, 'topTwoFavorites': { '$slice': ['$favorites', 2] } } }
    ]))

    print(result)
    client.close()

example()