$skip (Aggregation Pipeline Stage)

The $skip stage in the aggregation pipeline is used to skip a specified number of documents from the input and pass the remaining documents to the next stage in the pipeline. This is particularly useful for implementing pagination in queries and for controlling the subset of documents that subsequent stages in the pipeline operate on.

Syntax

The syntax for the $skip stage is straightforward. It accepts a single parameter which is the number of documents to skip.

{
  $skip: <number>
}

Parameters

Description
number The number of documents to skip before passing the remaining documents to the next stage.

Example(s)

Example 1: Skipping Documents in a Collection

Suppose we have a collection named stores with documents representing various store details. To skip the first 2 documents and return the rest, you can use the following aggregation pipeline:

db.stores.aggregate([
  { $skip: 2 }
])

Sample output

[
  {
    "_id": "7954bd5c-9ac2-4c10-bb7a-2b79bd0963c5",
    "store": {
      "name": "Downtown Store",
      "promotionEvents": ["Summer Sale", "Black Friday", "Holiday Deals"]
    }
  },
  {
    "_id": "7954bd5c-9ac2-4c10-bb7a-2b79bd0963c6",
    "store": {
      "name": "Uptown Store",
      "promotionEvents": ["Back to School", "Winter Sale"]
    }
  }
]

Example 2: Skipping Documents and Then Limiting the Result

To skip the first 2 documents and then limit the result to the next 3 documents, you can combine $skip with $limit:

db.stores.aggregate([
  { $skip: 2 },
  { $limit: 3 }
])

Example 3: Skipping Documents in a More Complex Pipeline

Consider a scenario where you want to skip the first promotion event and then project the remaining events for a specific store:

db.stores.aggregate([
  { $match: { "store.storeId": "12345" } },
  { $unwind: "$store.promotionEvents" },
  { $skip: 1 },
  { $project: { "store.promotionEvents": 1, _id: 0 } }
])

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