HTTP interface for documents

The HTTP API for documents lets you create, read, update, and delete documents in collections, either one or multiple at a time

The basic operations for documents are mapped to the standard HTTP methods:

  • Create: POST
  • Read: GET
  • Update: PATCH (partially modify)
  • Replace: PUT
  • Delete: DELETE
  • Check: HEAD (test for existence and get document metadata)

Addresses of documents

Any document can be retrieved using its unique URI:

http://server:port/_api/document/<document-identifier>

For example, assuming that the document identifier is demo/362549736, then the URL of that document is:

http://localhost:8529/_api/document/demo/362549736

The above URL schema does not specify a database name explicitly, so the default _system database is used. To explicitly specify the database context, use the following URL schema:

http://server:port/_db/<database-name>/_api/document/<document-identifier>

For example, using the a database called mydb:

http://localhost:8529/_db/mydb/_api/document/demo/362549736

Many examples in the documentation use the short URL format (and thus the _system database) for brevity.

Multiple documents in a single request

The document API can handle not only single documents but multiple documents in a single request. This is crucial for performance, in particular in the cluster situation, in which a single request can involve multiple network hops within the cluster. Another advantage is that it reduces the overhead of the HTTP protocol and individual network round trips between the client and the server. The general idea to perform multiple document operations in a single request is to use a JSON array of objects in the place of a single document. As a consequence, document keys, identifiers and revisions for preconditions have to be supplied embedded in the individual documents given. Multiple document operations are restricted to a single collection (document collection or edge collection).

Note that the GET, HEAD and DELETE HTTP operations generally do not allow to pass a message body. Thus, they cannot be used to perform multiple document operations in one request. However, there are alternative endpoints to request and delete multiple documents in one request.

Single document operations

Read document

reads a single document

GET /_api/document/{collection}/{key}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection from which the document is to be read.

  • key (string, required): The document key.

Header Parameters

  • If-None-Match (string, optional): If the “If-None-Match” header is given, then it must contain exactly one Etag. The document is returned, if it has a different revision than the given Etag. Otherwise an HTTP 304 is returned.

  • If-Match (string, optional): If the “If-Match” header is given, then it must contain exactly one Etag. The document is returned, if it has the same revision as the given Etag. Otherwise a HTTP 412 is returned.

  • x-arango-allow-dirty-read (boolean, optional): Set this header to true to allow the Coordinator to ask any shard replica for the data, not only the shard leader. This may result in “dirty reads”.

    The header is ignored if this operation is part of a Stream Transaction (x-arango-trx-id header). The header set when creating the transaction decides about dirty reads for the entire transaction, not the individual read operations.

  • x-arango-trx-id (string, optional): To make this operation a part of a Stream Transaction, set this header to the transaction ID returned by the POST /_api/transaction/begin call.

Returns the document identified by document-id. The returned document contains three special attributes: _id containing the document identifier, _key containing key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection and _rev containing the revision.

Responses

HTTP 200: is returned if the document was found

HTTP 304: is returned if the “If-None-Match” header is given and the document has the same version

HTTP 404: is returned if the document or collection was not found

HTTP 412: is returned if an “If-Match” header is given and the found document has a different version. The response will also contain the found document’s current revision in the _rev attribute. Additionally, the attributes _id and _key will be returned.

Examples

Use a document identifier:

shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69547

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 76
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-w---_"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Use a document identifier and an Etag:

shell> curl --header 'If-None-Match: "_fyvN-we---"' --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69567

Unknown document identifier:

shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/unknown-identifier

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 97
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Read document header

reads a single document head

HEAD /_api/document/{collection}/{key}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection from which the document is to be read.

  • key (string, required): The document key.

Header Parameters

  • If-None-Match (string, optional): If the “If-None-Match” header is given, then it must contain exactly one Etag. If the current document revision is not equal to the specified Etag, an HTTP 200 response is returned. If the current document revision is identical to the specified Etag, then an HTTP 304 is returned.

  • If-Match (string, optional): If the “If-Match” header is given, then it must contain exactly one Etag. The document is returned, if it has the same revision as the given Etag. Otherwise a HTTP 412 is returned.

  • x-arango-allow-dirty-read (boolean, optional): Set this header to true to allow the Coordinator to ask any shard replica for the data, not only the shard leader. This may result in “dirty reads”.

    The header is ignored if this operation is part of a Stream Transaction (x-arango-trx-id header). The header set when creating the transaction decides about dirty reads for the entire transaction, not the individual read operations.

  • x-arango-trx-id (string, optional): To make this operation a part of a Stream Transaction, set this header to the transaction ID returned by the POST /_api/transaction/begin call.

Like GET, but only returns the header fields and not the body. You can use this call to get the current revision of a document or check if the document was deleted.

Responses

HTTP 200: is returned if the document was found

HTTP 304: is returned if the “If-None-Match” header is given and the document has the same version

HTTP 404: is returned if the document or collection was not found

HTTP 412: is returned if an “If-Match” header is given and the found document has a different version. The response will also contain the found document’s current revision in the Etag header.

Examples

shell> curl -X HEAD --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69557

Create document

creates documents

POST /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the document is to be created.

Query Parameters

  • collection (string, optional): The name of the collection. This query parameter is only for backward compatibility. In ArangoDB versions < 3.0, the URL path was /_api/document and this query parameter was required. This combination still works, but the recommended way is to specify the collection in the URL path.

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until document has been synced to disk.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Additionally return the complete new document under the attribute new in the result.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Additionally return the complete old document under the attribute old in the result. Only available if the overwrite option is used.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if the document operation succeeds. No meta-data is returned for the created document. If the operation raises an error, an error object is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic.

  • overwrite (boolean, optional): If set to true, the insert becomes a replace-insert. If a document with the same _key already exists, the new document is not rejected with unique constraint violation error but replaces the old document. Note that operations with overwrite parameter require a _key attribute in the request payload, therefore they can only be performed on collections sharded by _key.

  • overwriteMode (string, optional): This option supersedes overwrite and offers the following modes:
    • "ignore": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, nothing is done and no write operation is carried out. The insert operation returns success in this case. This mode does not support returning the old document version using RETURN OLD. When using RETURN NEW, null is returned in case the document already existed.
    • "replace": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, it is overwritten with the specified document value. This mode is also used when no overwrite mode is specified but the overwrite flag is set to true.
    • "update": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, it is patched (partially updated) with the specified document value. The overwrite mode can be further controlled via the keepNull and mergeObjects parameters.
    • "conflict": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, return a unique constraint violation error so that the insert operation fails. This is also the default behavior in case the overwrite mode is not set, and the overwrite flag is false or not set either.

  • keepNull (boolean, optional): If the intention is to delete existing attributes with the update-insert command, the URL query parameter keepNull can be used with a value of false. This modifies the behavior of the patch command to remove any attributes from the existing document that are contained in the patch document with an attribute value of null. This option controls the update-insert behavior only.

  • mergeObjects (boolean, optional): Controls whether objects (not arrays) are merged if present in both, the existing and the update-insert document. If set to false, the value in the patch document overwrites the existing document’s value. If set to true, objects are merged. The default is true. This option controls the update-insert behavior only.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to add a new entry to the in-memory edge cache if an edge document is inserted.

Request Body

(object, required)

A JSON representation of a single document.

Creates a new document from the document given in the body, unless there is already a document with the _key given. If no _key is given, a new unique _key is generated automatically.

Possibly given _id and _rev attributes in the body are always ignored, the URL part or the query parameter collection respectively counts.

If the document was created successfully, then the Location header contains the path to the newly created document. The Etag header field contains the revision of the document. Both are only set in the single document case.

If silent is not set to true, the body of the response contains a JSON object with the following attributes:

  • _id contains the document identifier of the newly created document
  • _key contains the document key
  • _rev contains the document revision

If the collection parameter waitForSync is false, then the call returns as soon as the document has been accepted. It does not wait until the documents have been synced to disk.

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the document creation operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just this specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then, for each generated document, the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if the documents were created successfully and waitForSync was true.

HTTP 202: is returned if the documents were created successfully and waitForSync was false.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of one document. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection specified by collection is unknown. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 409: is returned in the single document case if a document with the same qualifiers in an indexed attribute conflicts with an already existing document and thus violates that unique constraint. The response body contains an error document in this case.

Examples

Create a document in a collection named products. Note that the revision identifier might or might not by equal to the auto-generated key.

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
{ "Hello": "World" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 60
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-tW---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69487
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Create a document in a collection named products with a collection-level waitForSync value of false.

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
{ "Hello": "World" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 60
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-se--_"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69463
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Create a document in a collection with a collection-level waitForSync value of false, but using the waitForSync query parameter.

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?waitForSync=true <<EOF
{ "Hello": "World" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 60
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-vi--_"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69538
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Unknown collection name

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
{ "Hello": "World" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 97
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Illegal document

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
{ 1: "World" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 97
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Use of returnNew:

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?returnNew=true <<EOF
{"Hello":"World"}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 143
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-vG--_"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69527
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body
shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
{ "Hello": "World", "_key" : "lock" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 58
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-uW--_"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/lock
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?overwrite=true <<EOF
{ "Hello": "Universe", "_key" : "lock" }
EOF

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 82
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-uq---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/lock
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Replace document

replaces a document

PUT /_api/document/{collection}/{key}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the document is to be replaced.

  • key (string, required): The document key.

Query Parameters

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until document has been synced to disk.

  • ignoreRevs (boolean, optional): By default, or if this is set to true, the _rev attributes in the given document is ignored. If this is set to false, then the _rev attribute given in the body document is taken as a precondition. The document is only replaced if the current revision is the one specified.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed document under the attribute old in the result.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete new document under the attribute new in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if the document operation succeeds. No meta-data is returned for the replaced document. If the operation raises an error, an error object is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to update an existing entry in the in-memory edge cache if an edge document is replaced.

Header Parameters

  • If-Match (string, optional): You can conditionally replace a document based on a target revision id by using the if-match HTTP header.

Request Body

(object, required)

A JSON representation of a single document.

Replaces the specified document with the one in the body, provided there is such a document and no precondition is violated.

The value of the _key attribute as well as attributes used as sharding keys may not be changed.

If the If-Match header is specified and the revision of the document in the database is unequal to the given revision, the precondition is violated.

If If-Match is not given and ignoreRevs is false and there is a _rev attribute in the body and its value does not match the revision of the document in the database, the precondition is violated.

If a precondition is violated, an HTTP 412 is returned.

If the document exists and can be updated, then an HTTP 201 or an HTTP 202 is returned (depending on waitForSync, see below), the Etag header field contains the new revision of the document and the Location header contains a complete URL under which the document can be queried.

Cluster only: The replace documents may contain values for the collection’s pre-defined shard keys. Values for the shard keys are treated as hints to improve performance. Should the shard keys values be incorrect ArangoDB may answer with a not found error.

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the document replacement operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If silent is not set to true, the body of the response contains a JSON object with the information about the identifier and the revision. The attribute _id contains the known document ID of the updated document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the new document revision.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

If the document does not exist, then a HTTP 404 is returned and the body of the response contains an error document.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if the document was replaced successfully and waitForSync was true.

HTTP 202: is returned if the document was replaced successfully and waitForSync was false.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of a document. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection or the document was not found.

HTTP 409: is returned if the replace causes a unique constraint violation in a secondary index.

HTTP 412: is returned if the precondition is violated. The response also contains the found documents’ current revisions in the _rev attributes. Additionally, the attributes _id and _key are returned.

Examples

Using a document identifier

shell> curl -X PUT --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69589 <<EOF
{"Hello": "you"}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 84
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-xO---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69589
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Unknown document identifier

shell> curl -X PUT --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69612 <<EOF
{}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 77
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Produce a revision conflict

shell> curl -X PUT --header 'If-Match: "_fyvN-xi---"' --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69599 <<EOF
{"other":"content"}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 152
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-xe--_"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Update document

updates a document

PATCH /_api/document/{collection}/{key}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the document is to be updated.

  • key (string, required): The document key.

Query Parameters

  • keepNull (boolean, optional): If the intention is to delete existing attributes with the patch command, the URL query parameter keepNull can be used with a value of false. This modifies the behavior of the patch command to remove any attributes from the existing document that are contained in the patch document with an attribute value of null.

  • mergeObjects (boolean, optional): Controls whether objects (not arrays) are merged if present in both the existing and the patch document. If set to false, the value in the patch document overwrites the existing document’s value. If set to true, objects are merged. The default is true.

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until document has been synced to disk.

  • ignoreRevs (boolean, optional): By default, or if this is set to true, the _rev attributes in the given document is ignored. If this is set to false, then the _rev attribute given in the body document is taken as a precondition. The document is only updated if the current revision is the one specified.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed document under the attribute old in the result.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete new document under the attribute new in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if the document operation succeeds. No meta-data is returned for the updated document. If the operation raises an error, an error object is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to update an existing entry in the in-memory edge cache if an edge document is updated.

Header Parameters

  • If-Match (string, optional): You can conditionally update a document based on a target revision id by using the if-match HTTP header.

Request Body

(object, required)

A JSON representation of a document update as an object.

Partially updates the document identified by the document ID. The body of the request must contain a JSON document with the attributes to patch (the patch document). All attributes from the patch document are added to the existing document if they do not yet exist, and overwritten in the existing document if they do exist there.

The value of the _key attribute as well as attributes used as sharding keys may not be changed.

Setting an attribute value to null in the patch document causes a value of null to be saved for the attribute by default.

If the If-Match header is specified and the revision of the document in the database is unequal to the given revision, the precondition is violated.

If If-Match is not given and ignoreRevs is false and there is a _rev attribute in the body and its value does not match the revision of the document in the database, the precondition is violated.

If a precondition is violated, an HTTP 412 is returned.

If the document exists and can be updated, then an HTTP 201 or an HTTP 202 is returned (depending on waitForSync, see below), the Etag header field contains the new revision of the document (in double quotes) and the Location header contains a complete URL under which the document can be queried.

Cluster only: The patch document may contain values for the collection’s pre-defined shard keys. Values for the shard keys are treated as hints to improve performance. Should the shard keys values be incorrect ArangoDB may answer with a not found error

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the updated document operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If silent is not set to true, the body of the response contains a JSON object with the information about the identifier and the revision. The attribute _id contains the known document ID of the updated document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the new document revision.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

If the document does not exist, then a HTTP 404 is returned and the body of the response contains an error document.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if the document was updated successfully and waitForSync was true.

HTTP 202: is returned if the document was updated successfully and waitForSync was false.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of a document. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection or the document was not found.

HTTP 409: is returned if the update causes a unique constraint violation in a secondary index.

HTTP 412: is returned if the precondition was violated. The response also contains the found documents’ current revisions in the _rev attributes. Additionally, the attributes _id and _key are returned.

Examples

Patches an existing document with new content.

shell> curl -X PATCH --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69435 <<EOF
{ 
  "hello" : "world" 
}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 84
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-qu---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69435
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl -X PATCH --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69435 <<EOF
{ 
  "numbers" : { 
    "one" : 1, 
    "two" : 2, 
    "three" : 3, 
    "empty" : null 
  } 
}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 84
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-q2---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69435
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69435

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 141
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-q2---"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl -X PATCH --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69435?keepNull=false <<EOF
{ 
  "hello" : null, 
  "numbers" : { 
    "four" : 4 
  } 
}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 84
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-rK---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69435
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69435

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 134
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-rK---"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Merging attributes of an object using mergeObjects:

shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69449

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 130
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-rq---"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl -X PATCH --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69449?mergeObjects=true <<EOF
{ 
  "inhabitants" : { 
    "indonesia" : 252164800, 
    "brazil" : 203553000 
  } 
}
EOF

shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69449

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 171
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-ry---"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl -X PATCH --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69449?mergeObjects=false <<EOF
{ 
  "inhabitants" : { 
    "pakistan" : 188346000 
  } 
}
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 84
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-s----"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69449
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
shell> curl --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69449

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 97
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-s----"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Removes a document

removes a document

DELETE /_api/document/{collection}/{key}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the document is to be deleted.

  • key (string, required): The document key.

Query Parameters

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until deletion operation has been synced to disk.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed document under the attribute old in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if the document operation succeeds. No meta-data is returned for the deleted document. If the operation raises an error, an error object is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to delete an existing entry from the in-memory edge cache and refill it with another edge if an edge document is removed.

Header Parameters

  • If-Match (string, optional): You can conditionally remove a document based on a target revision id by using the if-match HTTP header.

If silent is not set to true, the body of the response contains a JSON object with the information about the identifier and the revision. The attribute _id contains the known document ID of the removed document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the document revision.

If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

Responses

HTTP 200: is returned if the document was removed successfully and waitForSync was true.

HTTP 202: is returned if the document was removed successfully and waitForSync was false.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection or the document was not found. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 412: is returned if a “If-Match” header or rev is given and the found document has a different version. The response also contain the found document’s current revision in the _rev attribute. Additionally, the attributes _id and _key are returned.

Examples

Using document identifier:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69339

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 60
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-lW---"
expires: 0
location: /_db/_system/_api/document/products/69339
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Unknown document identifier:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69407

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 77
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Revision conflict:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'If-Match: "_fyvN-m2---"' --header 'accept: application/json' --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products/69358

HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 152
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
etag: "_fyvN-my--_"
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Document ETags

ArangoDB tries to adhere to the existing HTTP standard as far as possible. To this end, results of single document queries have the ETag HTTP header set to the document revision (the value of _rev document attribute) enclosed in double quotes.

You can check the revision of a document using the HEAD HTTP method.

If you want to query, replace, update, replace, or delete a document, then you can use the If-Match header to detect conflicts. If the document has changed, the operation is aborted and an HTTP 412 Precondition failed status code is returned.

If you obtain a document using GET and you want to check whether a newer revision is available, then you can use the If-None-Match HTTP header. If the document is unchanged (same document revision), an HTTP 412 Precondition failed status code is returned.

Multiple document operations

ArangoDB supports working with documents in bulk. Bulk operations affect a single collection. Using this API variant allows clients to amortize the overhead of single requests over an entire batch of documents. Bulk operations are not guaranteed to be executed serially, ArangoDB may execute the operations in parallel. This can translate into large performance improvements especially in a cluster deployment.

ArangoDB continues to process the remaining operations should an error occur during the processing of one operation. Errors are returned inline in the response body as an error document (see below for more details). Additionally, the X-Arango-Error-Codes header contains a map of the error codes that occurred together with their multiplicities, like 1205:10,1210:17 which means that in 10 cases the error 1205 (illegal document handle) and in 17 cases the error 1210 (unique constraint violated) has happened.

Generally, the bulk operations expect an input array and the result body contains a JSON array of the same length.

Read multiple documents

reads a single document

PUT /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection from which the documents are to be read.

Query Parameters

  • onlyget (boolean, required): This parameter is required to be true, otherwise a replace operation is executed!

  • ignoreRevs (string, optional): Should the value be true (the default): If a search document contains a value for the _rev field, then the document is only returned if it has the same revision value. Otherwise a precondition failed error is returned.

Header Parameters

  • x-arango-allow-dirty-read (boolean, optional): Set this header to true to allow the Coordinator to ask any shard replica for the data, not only the shard leader. This may result in “dirty reads”.

    The header is ignored if this operation is part of a Stream Transaction (x-arango-trx-id header). The header set when creating the transaction decides about dirty reads for the entire transaction, not the individual read operations.

  • x-arango-trx-id (string, optional): To make this operation a part of a Stream Transaction, set this header to the transaction ID returned by the POST /_api/transaction/begin call.

Request Body

(json, required)

An array of documents to retrieve.

Returns the documents identified by their _key in the body objects. The body of the request must contain a JSON array of either strings (the _key values to lookup) or search documents.

A search document must contain at least a value for the _key field. A value for _rev may be specified to verify whether the document has the same revision value, unless ignoreRevs is set to false.

Cluster only: The search document may contain values for the collection’s pre-defined shard keys. Values for the shard keys are treated as hints to improve performance. Should the shard keys values be incorrect ArangoDB may answer with a not found error.

The returned array of documents contain three special attributes: _id containing the document identifier, _key containing key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection and _rev containing the revision.

Responses

HTTP 200: is returned if no error happened

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of an array of documents. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection was not found.

Examples

Reading multiple documents identifier:

shell> curl -X PUT --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?onlyget=true <<EOF
["doc1", {"_key":"doc2"}]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 153
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Create multiple documents

creates multiple documents

POST /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the documents are to be created.

Query Parameters

  • collection (string, optional): The name of the collection. This is only for backward compatibility. In ArangoDB versions < 3.0, the URL path was /_api/document and this query parameter was required. This combination still works, but the recommended way is to specify the collection in the URL path.

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until document has been synced to disk.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Additionally return the complete new document under the attribute new in the result.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Additionally return the complete old document under the attribute old in the result. Only available if the overwrite option is used.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if all document operations succeed. No meta-data is returned for the created documents. If any of the operations raises an error, an array with the error object(s) is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic but you cannot map any errors to the inputs of your request.

  • overwrite (boolean, optional): If set to true, the insert becomes a replace-insert. If a document with the same _key already exists, the new document is not rejected with a unique constraint violation error but replaces the old document. Note that operations with overwrite parameter require a _key attribute in the request payload, therefore they can only be performed on collections sharded by _key.

  • overwriteMode (string, optional): This option supersedes overwrite and offers the following modes:
    • "ignore": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, nothing is done and no write operation is carried out. The insert operation returns success in this case. This mode does not support returning the old document version using RETURN OLD. When using RETURN NEW, null is returned in case the document already existed.
    • "replace": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, it is overwritten with the specified document value. This mode is also used when no overwrite mode is specified but the overwrite flag is set to true.
    • "update": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, it is patched (partially updated) with the specified document value. The overwrite mode can be further controlled via the keepNull and mergeObjects parameters.
    • "conflict": if a document with the specified _key value exists already, return a unique constraint violation error so that the insert operation fails. This is also the default behavior in case the overwrite mode is not set, and the overwrite flag is false or not set either.

  • keepNull (boolean, optional): If the intention is to delete existing attributes with the update-insert command, the URL query parameter keepNull can be used with a value of false. This modifies the behavior of the patch command to remove any attributes from the existing document that are contained in the patch document with an attribute value of null. This option controls the update-insert behavior only.

  • mergeObjects (boolean, optional): Controls whether objects (not arrays) are merged if present in both, the existing and the update-insert document. If set to false, the value in the patch document overwrites the existing document’s value. If set to true, objects are merged. The default is true. This option controls the update-insert behavior only.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to add new entries to the in-memory edge cache if edge documents are inserted.

Request Body

(json, required)

An array of documents to create.

Creates new documents from the documents given in the body, unless there is already a document with the _key given. If no _key is given, a new unique _key is generated automatically.

The result body contains a JSON array of the same length as the input array, and each entry contains the result of the operation for the corresponding input. In case of an error the entry is a document with attributes error set to true and errorCode set to the error code that has happened.

Possibly given _id and _rev attributes in the body are always ignored, the URL part or the query parameter collection respectively counts.

If silent is not set to true, the body of the response contains an array of JSON objects with the following attributes:

  • _id contains the document identifier of the newly created document
  • _key contains the document key
  • _rev contains the document revision

If the collection parameter waitForSync is false, then the call returns as soon as the documents have been accepted. It does not wait until the documents have been synced to disk.

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the document creation operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just this specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then, for each generated document, the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

Should an error have occurred with some of the documents the additional HTTP header X-Arango-Error-Codes is set, which contains a map of the error codes that occurred together with their multiplicities, as in: 1205:10,1210:17 which means that in 10 cases the error 1205 “illegal document handle” and in 17 cases the error 1210 “unique constraint violated” has happened.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if waitForSync was true and operations were processed.

HTTP 202: is returned if waitForSync was false and operations were processed.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of an array of documents. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection specified by collection is unknown. The response body contains an error document in this case.

Examples

Insert multiple documents:

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[{"Hello":"Earth"}, {"Hello":"Venus"}, {"Hello":"Mars"}]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 184
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Use of returnNew:

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?returnNew=true <<EOF
[{"Hello":"Earth"}, {"Hello":"Venus"}, {"Hello":"Mars"}]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 432
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Partially illegal documents:

shell> curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[{ "_key": 111 }, {"_key":"abc"}]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 127
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-error-codes: {"1221":1}
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Replace documents

replaces multiple documents

PUT /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): This URL parameter is the name of the collection in which the documents are replaced.

Query Parameters

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until the new documents have been synced to disk.

  • ignoreRevs (boolean, optional): By default, or if this is set to true, the _rev attributes in the given documents are ignored. If this is set to false, then any _rev attribute given in a body document is taken as a precondition. The document is only replaced if the current revision is the one specified.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed documents under the attribute old in the result.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete new documents under the attribute new in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if all document operations succeed. No meta-data is returned for the replaced documents. If at least one operation raises an error, an array with the error object(s) is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic but you cannot map any errors to the inputs of your request.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to update existing entries in the in-memory edge cache if edge documents are replaced.

Request Body

(json, required)

A JSON representation of an array of documents.

Replaces multiple documents in the specified collection with the ones in the body, the replaced documents are specified by the _key attributes in the body documents.

The value of the _key attribute as well as attributes used as sharding keys may not be changed.

If ignoreRevs is false and there is a _rev attribute in a document in the body and its value does not match the revision of the corresponding document in the database, the precondition is violated.

Cluster only: The replace documents may contain values for the collection’s pre-defined shard keys. Values for the shard keys are treated as hints to improve performance. Should the shard keys values be incorrect ArangoDB may answer with a not found error.

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the document replacement operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

The body of the response contains a JSON array of the same length as the input array with the information about the identifier and the revision of the replaced documents. In each entry, the attribute _id contains the known document-id of each updated document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the new document revision. In case of an error or violated precondition, an error object with the attribute error set to true and the attribute errorCode set to the error code is built.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then, for each generated document, the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then, for each generated document, the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

Note that if any precondition is violated or an error occurred with some of the documents, the return code is still 201 or 202, but the additional HTTP header X-Arango-Error-Codes is set, which contains a map of the error codes that occurred together with their multiplicities, as in: 1200:17,1205:10 which means that in 17 cases the error 1200 “revision conflict” and in 10 cases the error 1205 “illegal document handle” has happened.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if waitForSync was true and operations were processed.

HTTP 202: is returned if waitForSync was false and operations were processed.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of an array of documents. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection was not found.

Update documents

updates multiple documents

PATCH /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Name of the collection in which the documents are to be updated.

Query Parameters

  • keepNull (boolean, optional): If the intention is to delete existing attributes with the patch command, the URL query parameter keepNull can be used with a value of false. This modifies the behavior of the patch command to remove any attributes from the existing document that are contained in the patch document with an attribute value of null.

  • mergeObjects (boolean, optional): Controls whether objects (not arrays) are merged if present in both the existing and the patch document. If set to false, the value in the patch document overwrites the existing document’s value. If set to true, objects are merged. The default is true.

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until the new documents have been synced to disk.

  • ignoreRevs (boolean, optional): By default, or if this is set to true, the _rev attributes in the given documents are ignored. If this is set to false, then any _rev attribute given in a body document is taken as a precondition. The document is only updated if the current revision is the one specified.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed documents under the attribute old in the result.

  • returnNew (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete new documents under the attribute new in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if all document operations succeed. No meta-data is returned for the updated documents. If at least one operation raises an error, an array with the error object(s) is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic but you cannot map any errors to the inputs of your request.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to update existing entries in the in-memory edge cache if edge documents are updated.

Request Body

(json, required)

A JSON representation of an array of document updates as objects.

Partially updates documents, the documents to update are specified by the _key attributes in the body objects. The body of the request must contain a JSON array of document updates with the attributes to patch (the patch documents). All attributes from the patch documents are added to the existing documents if they do not yet exist, and overwritten in the existing documents if they do exist there.

The value of the _key attribute as well as attributes used as sharding keys may not be changed.

Setting an attribute value to null in the patch documents causes a value of null to be saved for the attribute by default.

If ignoreRevs is false and there is a _rev attribute in a document in the body and its value does not match the revision of the corresponding document in the database, the precondition is violated.

Cluster only: The patch document may contain values for the collection’s pre-defined shard keys. Values for the shard keys are treated as hints to improve performance. Should the shard keys values be incorrect ArangoDB may answer with a not found error

Optionally, the query parameter waitForSync can be used to force synchronization of the document replacement operation to disk even in case that the waitForSync flag had been disabled for the entire collection. Thus, the waitForSync query parameter can be used to force synchronization of just specific operations. To use this, set the waitForSync parameter to true. If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

The body of the response contains a JSON array of the same length as the input array with the information about the identifier and the revision of the updated documents. In each entry, the attribute _id contains the known document ID of each updated document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the new document revision. In case of an error or violated precondition, an error object with the attribute error set to true and the attribute errorCode set to the error code is built.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then, for each generated document, the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

If the query parameter returnNew is true, then, for each generated document, the complete new document is returned under the new attribute in the result.

Note that if any precondition is violated or an error occurred with some of the documents, the return code is still 201 or 202, but the additional HTTP header X-Arango-Error-Codes is set, which contains a map of the error codes that occurred together with their multiplicities, as in: 1200:17,1205:10 which means that in 17 cases the error 1200 “revision conflict” and in 10 cases the error 1205 “illegal document handle” has happened.

Responses

HTTP 201: is returned if waitForSync was true and operations were processed.

HTTP 202: is returned if waitForSync was false and operations were processed.

HTTP 400: is returned if the body does not contain a valid JSON representation of an array of documents. The response body contains an error document in this case.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection was not found.

Removes multiple documents

removes multiple document

DELETE /_api/document/{collection}

Path Parameters

  • collection (string, required): Collection from which documents are removed.

Query Parameters

  • waitForSync (boolean, optional): Wait until deletion operation has been synced to disk.

  • returnOld (boolean, optional): Return additionally the complete previous revision of the changed document under the attribute old in the result.

  • silent (boolean, optional): If set to true, an empty object is returned as response if all document operations succeed. No meta-data is returned for the deleted documents. If at least one of the operations raises an error, an array with the error object(s) is returned.

    You can use this option to save network traffic but you cannot map any errors to the inputs of your request.

  • ignoreRevs (boolean, optional): If set to true, ignore any _rev attribute in the selectors. No revision check is performed. If set to false then revisions are checked. The default is true.

  • refillIndexCaches (boolean, optional): Whether to delete existing entries from the in-memory edge cache and refill it with other edges if edge documents are removed.

Request Body

(json, required)

A JSON array of strings or documents.

The body of the request is an array consisting of selectors for documents. A selector can either be a string with a key or a string with a document identifier or an object with a _key attribute. This API call removes all specified documents from collection. If the ignoreRevs query parameter is false and the selector is an object and has a _rev attribute, it is a precondition that the actual revision of the removed document in the collection is the specified one.

The body of the response is an array of the same length as the input array. For each input selector, the output contains a JSON object with the information about the outcome of the operation. If no error occurred, an object is built in which the attribute _id contains the known document ID of the removed document, _key contains the key which uniquely identifies a document in a given collection, and the attribute _rev contains the document revision. In case of an error, an object with the attribute error set to true and errorCode set to the error code is built.

If the waitForSync parameter is not specified or set to false, then the collection’s default waitForSync behavior is applied. The waitForSync query parameter cannot be used to disable synchronization for collections that have a default waitForSync value of true.

If the query parameter returnOld is true, then the complete previous revision of the document is returned under the old attribute in the result.

Note that if any precondition is violated or an error occurred with some of the documents, the return code is still 200 or 202, but the additional HTTP header X-Arango-Error-Codes is set, which contains a map of the error codes that occurred together with their multiplicities, as in: 1200:17,1205:10 which means that in 17 cases the error 1200 “revision conflict” and in 10 cases the error 1205 “illegal document handle” has happened.

Responses

HTTP 200: is returned if waitForSync was true.

HTTP 202: is returned if waitForSync was false.

HTTP 404: is returned if the collection was not found. The response body contains an error document in this case.

Examples

Using document keys:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[ 
  "1", 
  "2" 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 107
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Using document identifiers:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[ 
  "products/1", 
  "products/2" 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 107
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Using objects with document keys:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[ 
  { 
    "_key" : "1" 
  }, 
  { 
    "_key" : "2" 
  } 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 107
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Unknown documents:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products <<EOF
[ 
  "1", 
  "other/2" 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 135
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-error-codes: {"1202":2}
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Check revisions:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?ignoreRevs=false <<EOF
[ 
  { 
    "_key" : "1", 
    "_rev" : "_fyvN-oy---" 
  }, 
  { 
    "_key" : "2", 
    "_rev" : "_fyvN-oy--_" 
  } 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 107
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Revision conflict:

shell> curl -X DELETE --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/document/products?ignoreRevs=false <<EOF
[ 
  { 
    "_key" : "1", 
    "_rev" : "non-matching revision" 
  }, 
  { 
    "_key" : "2", 
    "_rev" : "non-matching revision" 
  } 
]
EOF

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
content-type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
connection: Keep-Alive
content-length: 167
content-security-policy: frame-ancestors 'self'; form-action 'self';
expires: 0
pragma: no-cache
server: ArangoDB
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000 ; includeSubDomains
x-arango-error-codes: {"1200":2}
x-arango-queue-time-seconds: 0.000000
x-content-type-options: nosniff
Show response body

Read from followers

Introduced in: v3.10.0

Reading from followers in cluster deployments is only available in the Enterprise Edition, including the ArangoGraph Insights Platform.

In an ArangoDB cluster, all reads and writes are performed via the shard leaders. Shard replicas replicate all operations, but are only on hot standby to take over in case of a failure. This is to ensure consistency of reads and writes and allows giving a certain amount of transactional guarantees.

If high throughput is more important than consistency and transactional guarantees for you, then you may allow for so-called “dirty reads” or “reading from followers”, for certain read-only operations. In this case, Coordinators are allowed to read not only from leader shards but also from follower shards. This has a positive effect, because the reads can scale out to all DB-Servers which have copies of the data. Therefore, the read throughput is higher. Note however, that you still have to go through your Coordinators. To get the desired result, you have to have enough Coordinators, load balance your client requests across all of them, and then allow reads from followers.

You may observe the following data inconsistencies (dirty reads) when reading from followers:

  • It is possible to see old, obsolete revisions of documents. More exactly, it is possible that documents are already updated on the leader shard but the updates have not yet been replicated to the follower shard from which you are reading.

  • It is also possible to see changes to documents that have already happened on a replica, but are not yet officially committed on the leader shard.

When no writes are happening, allowing reading from followers is generally safe.

The following APIs support reading from followers:

  • Single document reads (GET /_api/document)
  • Batch document reads (PUT /_api/document?onlyget=true)
  • Read-only AQL queries (POST /_api/cursor)
  • The edge API (GET /_api/edges)
  • Read-only Stream Transactions and their sub-operations (POST /_api/transaction/begin etc.)

The following APIs do not support reading from followers:

  • The graph API (GET /_api/gharial etc.)
  • JavaScript Transactions (POST /_api/transaction)

You need to set the following HTTP header in API requests to ask for reads from followers:

x-arango-allow-dirty-read: true

This is in line with the older support to read from followers in the Active Failover deployment mode.

For single requests, you specify this header in the read request. For Stream Transactions, the header has to be set on the request that creates a read-only transaction.

The POST /_api/cursor endpoint also supports a query option that you can set instead of the HTTP header:

{ "query": "...", "options": { "allowDirtyReads": true } }

Every response to a request that could produce dirty reads has the following HTTP header:

x-arango-potential-dirty-read: true
❮  Collections

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