Provided by: libmongodb-perl_0.702.1+ds-1ubuntu1_amd64 
NAME
MongoDB::DataTypes - The data types used with MongoDB
VERSION
version 0.702.1
DESCRIPTION
This goes over the types you can save to the database and use for queries in the Perl driver. If you are
using another language, please refer to that language's documentation (<http://api.mongodb.org>).
NOTES FOR SQL PROGRAMMERS
You must query for data using the correct type.
For example, it is perfectly valid to have some records where the field "foo" is 123 (integer) and other
records where "foo" is "123" (string). Thus, you must query for the correct type. If you save "{"foo"
=> "123"}", you cannot query for it with "{"foo" => 123}". MongoDB is strict about types.
If the type of a field is ambiguous and important to your application, you should document what you
expect the application to send to the database and convert your data to those types before sending.
There are some object-document mappers that will enforce certain types for certain fields for you.
You generally shouldn't save numbers as strings, as they will behave like strings (e.g., range queries
won't work correctly) and the data will take up more space. If you set "looks_like_number" in
MongoDB::BSON, the driver will automatically convert everything that looks like a number to a number
before sending it to the database.
Numbers are the only exception to the strict typing: all number types stored by MongoDB (32-bit integers,
64-bit integers, 64-bit floating point numbers) will match each other.
TYPES
Numbers
By default, numbers with a decimal point will be saved as doubles (64-bit).
32-bit Platforms
Numbers without decimal points will be saved as 32-bit integers. To save a number as a 64-bit integer,
use bigint:
use bigint;
$collection->insert({"user_id" => 28347197234178})
The driver will die if you try to insert a number beyond the signed 64-bit range:
-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to +9,223,372,036,854,775,807.
Numbers that are saved as 64-bit integers will be decoded as doubles.
64-bit Platforms
Numbers without a decimal point will be saved and returned as 64-bit integers. Note that there is no way
to save a 32-bit int on a 64-bit machine.
Keep in mind that this can cause some weirdness to ensue if some machines are 32-bit and others are
64-bit. Take the following example:
• Programmer 1 saves an int on a 32-bit platform.
• Programmer 2 retrieves the document on a 64-bit platform and re-saves it, effectively converting it
to a 64-bit int.
• Programmer 1 retrieves the document on their 32-bit machine, which decodes the 64-bit int as a
double.
Nothing drastic, but good to be aware of.
64-bit integers in the shell
The Mongo shell has one numeric type: the 8-byte float. This means that it cannot always represent an
8-byte integer exactly. Thus, when you display a 64-bit integer in the shell, it will be wrapped in a
subobject that indicates it might be an approximate value. For instance, if we run this Perl on a 64-bit
machine:
$coll->insert({_id => 1});
then look at it in the shell, we see:
> db.whatever.findOne()
{
"_id" :
{
"floatApprox" : 1
}
}
This doesn't mean that we saved a float, it just means that the float value of a 64-bit integer may not
be exact.
Dealing with numbers and strings in Perl
Perl is very flexible about whether something is number or a string: it generally infers the type from
context. Unfortunately, the driver doesn't have any context when it has to choose how to serialize a
variable. Therefore, the default behavior is to introspect the flags that are set on that variable and
decide what the user meant, which are generally affected by the last operation.
my $var = "4";
# stored as the string "4"
$collection->insert({myVar => $var});
$var = int($var) if (int($var) eq $var);
# stored as the int 4
$collection->insert({myVar => $var});
Because of this, users often find that they end up with more strings than they wanted in their database.
If you would like to have everything that looks like a number saved as a number, set the
"looks_like_number" in MongoDB::BSON option.
$MongoDB::BSON::looks_like_number = 1;
my $var = "4";
# stored as the int 4
$collection->insert({myVar => $var});
This will send anything that "looks like" a number as a number. It can recognize anything that
Scalar::Util's "looks_like_number" function can recognize.
On the other hand, sometimes there is data that looks like a number but should be saved as a string. For
example, suppose we were storing zip codes. If we wanted to generally convert strings to numbers, we
might have something like:
$MongoDB::BSON::looks_like_number = 1;
# zip is stored as an int: 4101
$collection->insert({city => "Portland", "zip" => "04101"});
To force a "number" to be saved as a string with aggressive number conversion on, bless the string as a
"MongoDB::BSON::String" type:
my $z = "04101";
my $zip = bless(\$z, "MongoDB::BSON::String");
# zip is stored as "04101"
$collection->insert({city => "Portland",
zip => bless(\$zip, "MongoDB::BSON::String")});
Additionally, there are two utility functions, "force_int" and c<force_double>, to explicitly set Perl's
internal type flags to Integer ("IV") and Double ("NV") respectively, thus triggering MongoDB's
recognition of the values as Int32/Int64 (depending on the platform) or Double:
my $x = 1.0;
MongoDB::force_int($x);
$coll->insert({x => $x}); # Inserts an integer
MongoDB::force_double($x);
$coll->insert({x => $x}); # Inserts a double
Strings
All strings must be valid UTF-8 to be sent to the database. If a string is not valid, it will not be
saved. If you need to save a non-UTF-8 string, you can save it as a binary blob (see the Binary Data
section below).
All strings returned from the database have the UTF-8 flag set.
Unfortunately, due to Perl weirdness, UTF-8 is not very pretty. For example, suppose we have a UTF-8
string:
my $str = 'Aaland Islands';
Now, let's print it:
print "$str\n";
You can see in the output:
"\x{c5}land Islands"
Lovely, isn't it? This is how Perl prints UTF-8. To make it "pretty," there are a couple options:
my $pretty_str = utf8::encode($str);
This, unintuitively, clears the UTF-8 flag.
You can also just run
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';
and then the string (and all future UTF-8 strings) will print "correctly."
You can also turn off $MongoDB::BSON::utf_flag_on, and the UTF-8 flag will not be set when strings are
decoded:
$MongoDB::BSON::utf8_flag_on = 0;
Arrays
Arrays must be saved as array references ("\@foo", not @foo).
Embedded Documents
Embedded documents are of the same form as top-level documents: either hash references or Tie::IxHashs.
Dates
The DateTime or DateTime::Tiny packages can be used to insert and query for dates. Dates stored in the
database will be returned as instances of one of these classes, depending on the "dt_type" setting of the
connection:
$conn->dt_type( 'DateTime::Tiny' );
An example of storing and retrieving a date:
use DateTime;
my $now = DateTime->now;
$collection->insert({'ts' => $now});
my $obj = $collection->find_one;
print "Today is ".$obj->{'ts'}->ymd."\n";
An example of querying for a range of dates:
my $start = DateTime->from_epoch( epoch => 100000 );
my $end = DateTime->from_epoch( epoch => 500000 );
my $cursor = $collection->query({event => {'$gt' => $start, '$lt' => $end}});
Warning: creating Perl DateTime objects is extremely slow. Consider saving dates as numbers or
"DateTime::Tiny" objects and converting the numbers to DateTimes only when needed. A single DateTime
field can make deserialization up to 10 times slower.
For example, you could use the time function to store seconds since the epoch:
$collection->update($criteria, {'$set' => {"last modified" => time()}})
This will be faster to deserialize.
Note that (at least, as of "DateTime::Tiny" version 1.04) there is no time-zone attribute for
"DateTime::Tiny" objects. We therefore consider all such times to be in the "UTC" time zone. Likewise,
"DateTime::Tiny" has no notion of milliseconds (yet?), so the milliseconds portion of the datetime will
be set to zero.
Regular Expressions
Use "qr/.../" to use a regular expression in a query:
my $cursor = $collection->query({"name" => qr/[Jj]oh?n/});
Regular expressions will match strings saved in the database.
You can also save and retrieve regular expressions themselves:
$collection->insert({"regex" => qr/foo/i});
$obj = $collection->find_one;
if ("FOO" =~ $obj->{'regex'}) { # matches
print "hooray\n";
}
Note for Perl 5.8 users: flags are lost when regular expressions are retrieved from the database (this
does not affect queries or Perl 5.10+).
Booleans
Use the boolean package to get boolean values. "boolean::true" and "boolean::false" are the only parts
of the package used, currently.
An example of inserting boolean values:
use boolean;
$collection->insert({"okay" => true, "name" => "fred"});
An example using boolean values for query operators (only returns documents where the name field exists):
my $cursor = $collection->query({"name" => {'$exists' => boolean::true}});
Most of the time, you can just use 1 or 0 instead of "true" and "false", such as for specifying fields to
return. boolean is the only way to save booleans to the database, though.
By default, booleans are returned from the database as integers. To return booleans as booleans, set
$MongoDB::BSON::use_boolean to 1.
MongoDB::OID
"OID" stands for "Object ID", and is a unique id that is automatically added to documents if they do not
already have an "_id" field before they are saved to the database. They are 12 bytes which are
guarenteed to be unique. Their string form is a 24-character string of hexidecimal digits.
To create a unique id:
my $oid = MongoDB::OID->new;
To create a MongoDB::OID from an existing 24-character hexidecimal string:
my $oid = MongoDB::OID->new("value" => "123456789012345678901234");
Binary Data
By default, all database strings are UTF8. To save images, binaries, and other non-UTF8 data, you need
to store it as binary data. There are two ways to do this.
String Refs
In general, you can pass the string as a reference. For example:
# non-utf8 string
my $string = "\xFF\xFE\xFF";
$collection->insert({"photo" => \$string});
This will save the variable as binary data, bypassing the UTF8 check.
Binary data can be matched exactly by the database, so this query will match the object we inserted
above:
$collection->find({"photo" => \$string});
MongoDB::BSON::Binary type
You can also use the MongoDB::BSON::Binary class. This allows you to preserve the subtype of your data.
Binary data in MongoDB stores a "type" field, which can be any integer between 0 and 255. Identical data
will only match if the subtype is the same.
Perl uses the default subtype of "SUBTYPE_GENERIC".
The driver defaults to returning binary data as strings, not instances of MongoDB::BSON::Binary (or even
string references) for backwards compatibility reasons. If you need to round-trip binary data, set the
"MongoDB::BSON::use_binary" flag:
$MongoDB::BSON::use_binary = 1;
Comparisons (e.g., $gt, $lt) may not work as you expect with binary data, so it is worth experimenting.
MongoDB::Code
MongoDB::Code is used to represent JavaScript code and, optionally, scope. To create one:
use MongoDB::Code;
my $code = MongoDB::Code->new("code" => "function() { return 'hello, world'; }");
Or, with a scope:
my $code = MongoDB::Code->new("code" => "function() { return 'hello, '+name; }",
"scope" => {"name" => "Fred"});
Which would then return "hello, Fred" when run.
MongoDB::MinKey
"MongoDB::MinKey" is "less than" any other value of any type. This can be useful for always returning
certain documents first (or last).
"MongoDB::MinKey" has no methods, fields, or string form. To create one, it is sufficient to say:
bless $minKey, "MongoDB::MinKey";
MongoDB::MaxKey
"MongoDB::MaxKey" is "greater than" any other value of any type. This can be useful for always returning
certain documents last (or first).
"MongoDB::MaxKey" has no methods, fields, or string form. To create one, it is sufficient to say:
bless $minKey, "MongoDB::MaxKey";
MongoDB::Timestamp
my $ts = MongoDB::Timestamp->new({sec => $seconds, inc => $increment});
Timestamps are used internally by MongoDB's replication. You can see them in their natural habitat by
querying "local.main.$oplog". Each entry looks something like:
{ "ts" : { "t" : 1278872990000, "i" : 1 }, "op" : "n", "ns" : "", "o" : { } }
In the shell, timestamps are shown in milliseconds, although they are stored as seconds. So, to
represent this document in Perl, we would do:
my $oplog = {
"ts" => MongoDB::Timestamp->new("sec" => 1278872990, "inc" => 1),
"op" => "n",
"ns" => "",
"o" => {}
}
Timestamps are not dates. You should not use them unless you are doing something low-level with
replication. To save dates or times, use a number, DateTime object, or DateTime::Tiny object.
AUTHORS
• Florian Ragwitz <rafl@debian.org>
• Kristina Chodorow <kristina@mongodb.org>
• Mike Friedman <mike.friedman@10gen.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is Copyright (c) 2013 by 10gen, Inc..
This is free software, licensed under:
The Apache License, Version 2.0, January 2004
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
Around line 203:
Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in ''Aaland'. Assuming UTF-8
perl v5.18.1 2013-08-12 MongoDB::DataTypes(3pm)