How to print out more than 20 items (documents) in MongoDB's shell?

db.foo.find().limit(300)

won't do it. It still prints out only 20 documents.

db.foo.find().toArray()
db.foo.find().forEach(printjson)

will both print out very expanded view of each document instead of the 1-line version for find():

DBQuery.shellBatchSize = 300

MongoDB Docs - Configure the mongo Shell - Change the mongo Shell Batch Size

From the shell you can use:

db.collection.find().toArray()

to display all documents without having to use it.

You can use it inside of the shell to iterate over the next 20 results. Just type it if you see "has more" and you will see the next 20 items.

Could always do:

db.foo.find().forEach(function(f){print(tojson(f, '', true));});

To get that compact view.

Also, I find it very useful to limit the fields returned by the find so:

db.foo.find({},{name:1}).forEach(function(f){print(tojson(f, '', true));});

which would return only the _id and name field from foo.

I suggest you to have a ~/.mongorc.js file so you do not have to set the default size everytime.

 # execute in your terminal
 touch ~/.mongorc.js
 echo 'DBQuery.shellBatchSize = 100;' > ~/.mongorc.js
 # add one more line to always prettyprint the ouput
 echo 'DBQuery.prototype._prettyShell = true; ' >> ~/.mongorc.js

To know more about what else you can do, I suggest you to look at this article: http://mo.github.io/2017/01/22/mongo-db-tips-and-tricks.html