Define Stored Source Fields in Your Atlas Search Index

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Syntax

Options
Boolean Values
Object
Examples

Note

The Atlas Search index storedSource option and $search returnStoredSource option are in preview, but can be used in production applications. If there are any syntax or behavior changes between the preview stage and general availability (GA), we will proactively communicate before introducing any breaking changes. The MongoDB Cloud Support team will help troubleshoot any issues related to using this feature as part of your contract.

The storedSource option in an Atlas Search index definition specifies the fields in the source document that Atlas Search must store. Atlas Search doesn't index stored fields and so you can't query these fields, but you can retrieve stored fields at query time using the returnStoredSource option. In certain cases, this configuration improves query performance by avoiding implicit query time lookup on the backend database. You can store fields of all BSON Data Types on Atlas Search.

Note

storedSource is only available on Atlas clusters running one of the following versions:

MongoDB 4.4.12+
MongoDB 5.0.6+

To learn more about retrieving the stored fields, see Return Stored Source Fields.

Syntax

The storedSource option has the following syntax in an index definition:

{
  ...,
  "storedSource": true | false | {
    "include" | "exclude": [
      "<field-name>",
      ...
    ]
  }
}

Options

The storedSource option takes a boolean value or an object in the index definition.

Boolean Values

Value	Description
`true`	Specifies that Atlas Search must store all the fields in the documents. Storing full documents might significantly impact performance during indexing and querying. To learn more, see Storing Source Fields.
`false`	Specifies that Atlas Search must not store the original source document. This is the default value for the `storedSource` option.

Object

The storedSource option object accepts one of the following fields:

Note

The object must contain either include or exclude.

Field	Type	Description
`include`	array of strings	List that contains the field names or dot-separated paths to fields to store. In addition to the specified fields, Atlas Search stores `_id` also by default.
`exclude`	array of strings	List that contains the field names or dot-separated paths to fields to exclude from being stored. If specified, Atlas Search stores original documents except the fields listed here.

Examples

The following index examples use the fields in the sample_mflix.movies collection to demonstrate how to configure the fields to store on Atlas Search using the storedSource option. The examples use the dot notation to specify embedded fields.

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