text

  • 05/09/2025

The $text operator is used to perform text search queries on a collection. The $text operator enables searching for text within string fields that are indexed as a text index.

Syntax

The basic syntax for the $text operator is:

{
  $text: {
    $search: <string>,
    $language: <string>, // optional
    $caseSensitive: <boolean>, // optional
    $diacriticSensitive: <boolean> // optional
  }
}

Parameters

Parameter Description
search The search string to query in the text index
language Optional field to specify the language to be used for the search. The default value is "english"
caseSensitive Optional boolean field to specify whether the search should be a case sensitive search. The default value is false
diacriticSensitive Optional boolean field to specify whether the search should be diacritic-sensitive. The default value is false

Examples

Consider this sample document from the stores collection in the StoreData database.

{
    "_id": "0fcc0bf0-ed18-4ab8-b558-9848e18058f4",
    "name": "First Up Consultants | Beverage Shop - Satterfieldmouth",
    "location": {
        "lat": -89.2384,
        "lon": -46.4012
    },
    "staff": {
        "totalStaff": {
            "fullTime": 8,
            "partTime": 20
        }
    },
    "sales": {
        "totalSales": 75670,
        "salesByCategory": [
            {
                "categoryName": "Wine Accessories",
                "totalSales": 34440
            },
            {
                "categoryName": "Bitters",
                "totalSales": 39496
            },
            {
                "categoryName": "Rum",
                "totalSales": 1734
            }
        ]
    },
    "promotionEvents": [
        {
            "eventName": "Unbeatable Bargain Bash",
            "promotionalDates": {
                "startDate": {
                    "Year": 2024,
                    "Month": 6,
                    "Day": 23
                },
                "endDate": {
                    "Year": 2024,
                    "Month": 7,
                    "Day": 2
                }
            },
            "discounts": [
                {
                    "categoryName": "Whiskey",
                    "discountPercentage": 7
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Bitters",
                    "discountPercentage": 15
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Brandy",
                    "discountPercentage": 8
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Sports Drinks",
                    "discountPercentage": 22
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Vodka",
                    "discountPercentage": 19
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "eventName": "Steal of a Deal Days",
            "promotionalDates": {
                "startDate": {
                    "Year": 2024,
                    "Month": 9,
                    "Day": 21
                },
                "endDate": {
                    "Year": 2024,
                    "Month": 9,
                    "Day": 29
                }
            },
            "discounts": [
                {
                    "categoryName": "Organic Wine",
                    "discountPercentage": 19
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "White Wine",
                    "discountPercentage": 20
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Sparkling Wine",
                    "discountPercentage": 19
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Whiskey",
                    "discountPercentage": 17
                },
                {
                    "categoryName": "Vodka",
                    "discountPercentage": 23
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Note

Using the $text operator requires all fields in the query filter to be specified as a text index during index creation.

Example 1 - Basic text search

db.stores.find({"$text": {"$search": "Ebba's Smart TVs"}}, {"_id": 1}, {"limit": 1})

This returns the following results:

{
  "_id": "0fcc0bf0-ed18-4ab8-b558-9848e18058f4"
}

Note

By default, the text search functionality treats all word separators as tokenizers for the search query. In this example, the search query conducts a search on three separate tokens - "Ebba's," "Smart" and "TVs" and returns all documents that contain at least one of the three terms.

Example 2 - Basic text search on the full string

db.stores.find({"$text": {"$search": "\"Ebba's Smart TVs\""}}, {"_id": 1}, {"limit": 1})

This returns the following results:

{
  "_id": "1grc25f8-7h65-3g7r-a443-0985w3244rd3"
}

Note

To avoid tokenizing the terms in the search string, quotation marks must enclose the string. In this example, the query conducts a search on a single token - "Ebba's Smart TVs" without separating the three words into individual tokens.

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