MongoDB $or

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll about the MongoDB $or operator and how to use it to perform a logical OR operation.

Introduction to the MongoDB $or operator

The $or is a logical query operator that carries a logical OR operation on an array of one or more expressions and selects the documents that satisfy at least one expression.

Here is the syntax of the $or operator:

$or:[{expression1}, {expression2},...]
Code language: PHP (php)

MongoDB $or operator examples

We’ll use the following products collection:

db.products.insertMany([
	{ "_id" : 1, "name" : "xPhone", "price" : 799, "releaseDate" : ISODate("2011-05-14T00:00:00Z"), "spec" : { "ram" : 4, "screen" : 6.5, "cpu" : 2.66 }, "color" : [ "white", "black" ], "storage" : [ 64, 128, 256 ] },
	{ "_id" : 2, "name" : "xTablet", "price" : 899, "releaseDate" : ISODate("2011-09-01T00:00:00Z"), "spec" : { "ram" : 16, "screen" : 9.5, "cpu" : 3.66 }, "color" : [ "white", "black", "purple" ], "storage" : [ 128, 256, 512 ] },
	{ "_id" : 3, "name" : "SmartTablet", "price" : 899, "releaseDate" : ISODate("2015-01-14T00:00:00Z"), "spec" : { "ram" : 12, "screen" : 9.7, "cpu" : 3.66 }, "color" : [ "blue" ], "storage" : [ 16, 64, 128 ] },
	{ "_id" : 4, "name" : "SmartPad", "price" : 699, "releaseDate" : ISODate("2020-05-14T00:00:00Z"), "spec" : { "ram" : 8, "screen" : 9.7, "cpu" : 1.66 }, "color" : [ "white", "orange", "gold", "gray" ], "storage" : [ 128, 256, 1024 ] },
	{ "_id" : 5, "name" : "SmartPhone", "price" : 599, "releaseDate" : ISODate("2022-09-14T00:00:00Z"), "spec" : { "ram" : 4, "screen" : 9.7, "cpu" : 1.66 }, "color" : [ "white", "orange", "gold", "gray" ], "storage" : [ 128, 256 ] }
])
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

1) Using MongoDB $or operator example

The following example uses the $or operator to select all documents in the products collection where the value in the price field equals 799 or 899:

db.products.find({
    $or: [{
        price: 799
    }, {
        price: 899
    }]
}, {
    name: 1,
    price: 1
})
Code language: PHP (php)

It returned the following documents:

[
  { _id: 1, name: 'xPhone', price: 799 },
  { _id: 2, name: 'xTablet', price: 899 },
  { _id: 3, name: 'SmartTablet', price: 899 }
]
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Since this example checks equality for the same price field, you should use the $in operator instead:

db.products.find({
    price: {
        $in: [799, 899]
    }
}, {
    name: 1,
    price: 1
})
Code language: CSS (css)

2) Using MongoDB $or operator to select documents where the value of a field is in a range

The following example uses the $or operator to select all documents where the price is less than 699 or greater than 799:

db.products.find({
    $or: [
        { price: {$lt: 699} },
        { price: {$gt: 799} }
    ]
}, {
    name: 1,
    price: 1
})
Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

[
  { _id: 2, name: 'xTablet', price: 899 },
  { _id: 3, name: 'SmartTablet', price: 899 },
  { _id: 5, name: 'SmartPhone', price: 599 }
]
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Summary

• Use the MongoDB $or operator to perform a logical OR operation on a list of expressions and select documents that satisfy at least one expression.