Working with documents

Creating a document

To create a new document, get a reference to the collection and call its insert() method, passing the object/document to be created in ArangoDB as a paramter.

# Get a reference to the 'patients' collection
patients_col = db.collection(name="patients")

# Insert two new documents into the 'patients' collection
patients_col.insert({"name": "Jane", "age": 39})
patients_col.insert({"name": "John", "age": 18})

John's patient record is:

{
  "_id": "patients/741603",
  "_rev": "_fQ2grGu---",
  "_key": "741603",
  "name": "John",
  "age": 18
}

Patching a document

To patch or partially update a document, call the update() method of the collection and pass the object/document as a parameter. The document must have a property named _key holding the unique key assigned to the document.

# Patch John's patient record by adding a city property to the document
patients_col.update({ "_key": "741603", "city": "Cleveland" })

After the patching operation, John's document is:

{
  "_id": "patients/741603",
  "_rev": "_fQ2h4TK---",
  "_key": "741603",
  "name": "John",
  "age": 18,
  "city": "Cleveland"
}

Notice that the record was patched by adding a city property to the document. All other properties remain the same.

Replacing a document

To replace or fully update a document, call the replace() method of the collection and pass the object/document that fully replaces thee existing document as a parameter. The document must have a property named _key holding the unique key assigned to the document.

# Replace John's document
patients_col.replace({ "_key": "741603", "fullname": "John Doe", "age": 18, "city": "Cleveland" })

After the replacement operation, John's document is now:

{
  "_id": "patients/741603",
  "_rev": "_fQ2uY3y---",
  "_key":"741603",
  "fullname": "John Doe",
  "age": 18,
  "city": "Cleveland"
}

Notice that the name property is now gone from John's document because it was not specified in the request when the document was fully replaced.

Deleting a document

To delete a document, call the delete() method of the collection and pass an document containing at least the _key attribute as a parameter.

# Delete John's document
patients_col.delete({ "_key": "741603" })

 

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