How to use mongoimport to import csv

Trying to import a CSV with contact information:

Name,Address,City,State,ZIP  
Jane Doe,123 Main St,Whereverville,CA,90210  
John Doe,555 Broadway Ave,New York,NY,10010 

Running this doesn't seem to add any documents to the database:

$ mongoimport -d mydb -c things --type csv --file locations.csv --headerline

Trace says imported 1 objects, but firing up the Mongo shell and running db.things.find() doesn't show any new documents.

What am I missing?

Your example worked for me with MongoDB 1.6.3 and 1.7.3. Example below was for 1.7.3. Are you using an older version of MongoDB?

$ cat > locations.csv
Name,Address,City,State,ZIP
Jane Doe,123 Main St,Whereverville,CA,90210
John Doe,555 Broadway Ave,New York,NY,10010
 ctrl-d
$ mongoimport -d mydb -c things --type csv --file locations.csv --headerline
connected to: 127.0.0.1
imported 3 objects
$ mongo
MongoDB shell version: 1.7.3
connecting to: test
> use mydb
switched to db mydb
> db.things.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4d32a36ed63d057130c08fca"), "Name" : "Jane Doe", "Address" : "123 Main St", "City" : "Whereverville", "State" : "CA", "ZIP" : 90210 }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4d32a36ed63d057130c08fcb"), "Name" : "John Doe", "Address" : "555 Broadway Ave", "City" : "New York", "State" : "NY", "ZIP" : 10010 }

I was perplexed with a similar problem where mongoimport did not give me an error but would report importing 0 records. I had saved my file that didn't work using the OSX Excel for Mac 2011 version using the default "Save as.." "xls as csv" without specifying "Windows Comma Separated(.csv)" format specifically. After researching this site and trying the "Save As again using "Windows Comma Separated (.csv)" format, mongoimport worked fine. I think mongoimport expects a newline character on each line and the default Mac Excel 2011 csv export didn't provide that character at the end of each line.

We need to execute the following command:

mongoimport --host=127.0.0.1 -d database_name -c collection_name --type csv --file csv_location --headerline

-d is database name

-c is collection name

--headerline If using --type csv or --type tsv, uses the first line as field names. Otherwise, mongoimport will import the first line as a distinct document.

For more information: mongoimport

you will most likely need to authenticate if you're working in production sort of environments. You can use something like this to authenticate against the correct database with appropriate credentials.

mongoimport -d db_name -c collection_name --type csv --file filename.csv --headerline --host hostname:portnumber --authenticationDatabase admin --username 'iamauser' --password 'pwd123'