While retrieving the contents of a collection, you can sort and arrange them in ascending or descending orders using the sort() method.

To this method, you can pass the field(s) and the sorting order which is 1 or -1. Where, 1 is for ascending order and -1 is descending order.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the sort() method.

>db.COLLECTION_NAME.find().sort({KEY:1})

Example

Assume we have created a collection and inserted 5 documents into it as shown below −

> use testDB
switched to db testDB
> db.createCollection("myColl")
{ "ok" : 1 }
> data = [
   ... {"_id": "1001", "name": "Ram", "age": "26", "city": "Hyderabad"},
   ... {"_id": "1002", "name": "Rahim", "age": 27, "city": "Bangalore"},
   ... {"_id": "1003", "name": "Robert", "age": 28, "city": "Mumbai"},
   ... {"_id": "1004", "name": "Romeo", "age": 25, "city": "Pune"},
   ... {"_id": "1005", "name": "Sarmista", "age": 23, "city": "Delhi"},
   ... {"_id": "1006", "name": "Rasajna", "age": 26, "city": "Chennai"}
]
> db.sample.insert(data)
BulkWriteResult({
   "writeErrors" : [ ],
   "writeConcernErrors" : [ ],
   "nInserted" : 6,
   "nUpserted" : 0,
   "nMatched" : 0,
   "nModified" : 0,
   "nRemoved" : 0,
   "upserted" : [ ]
})

Following line retrieves all the documents of the collection which are sorted in ascending order based on age.

> db.sample.find().sort({age:1})
{ "_id" : "1005", "name" : "Sarmista", "age" : 23, "city" : "Delhi" }
{ "_id" : "1004", "name" : "Romeo", "age" : 25, "city" : "Pune" }
{ "_id" : "1006", "name" : "Rasajna", "age" : 26, "city" : "Chennai" }
{ "_id" : "1002", "name" : "Rahim", "age" : 27, "city" : "Bangalore" }
{ "_id" : "1003", "name" : "Robert", "age" : 28, "city" : "Mumbai" }
{ "_id" : "1001", "name" : "Ram", "age" : "26", "city" : "Hyderabad" }

Sorting the documents using python

To sort the results of a query in ascending or, descending order pymongo provides the sort() method. To this method, pass a number value representing the number of documents you need in the result.

By default, this method sorts the documents in ascending order based on the specified field. If you need to sort in descending order pass -1 along with the field name −

coll.find().sort("age",-1)

Example

Following example retrieves all the documents of a collection arranged according to the age values in ascending order −

from pymongo import MongoClient

#Creating a pymongo client
client = MongoClient(''localhost'', 27017)

#Getting the database instance
db = client[''b_mydb'']

#Creating a collection
coll = db[''myColl'']

#Inserting document into a collection
data = [
   {"_id": "1001", "name": "Ram", "age": "26", "city": "Hyderabad"},
   {"_id": "1002", "name": "Rahim", "age": "27", "city": "Bangalore"},
   {"_id": "1003", "name": "Robert", "age": "28", "city": "Mumbai"},
   {"_id": "1004", "name": "Romeo", "age": 25, "city": "Pune"},
   {"_id": "1005", "name": "Sarmista", "age": 23, "city": "Delhi"},
   {"_id": "1006", "name": "Rasajna", "age": 26, "city": "Chennai"}
]
res = coll.insert_many(data)
print("Data inserted ......")

#Retrieving first 3 documents using the find() and limit() methods
print("List of documents (sorted in ascending order based on age): ")

for doc1 in coll.find().sort("age"):
   print(doc1)

Output

Data inserted ......
List of documents (sorted in ascending order based on age):
{''_id'': ''1005'', ''name'': ''Sarmista'', ''age'': 23, ''city'': ''Delhi''}
{''_id'': ''1004'', ''name'': ''Romeo'', ''age'': 25, ''city'': ''Pune''}
{''_id'': ''1006'', ''name'': ''Rasajna'', ''age'': 26, ''city'': ''Chennai''}
{''_id'': ''1001'', ''name'': ''Ram'', ''age'': ''26'', ''city'': ''Hyderabad''}
{''_id'': ''1002'', ''name'': ''Rahim'', ''age'': ''27'', ''city'': ''Bangalore''}
{''_id'': ''1003'', ''name'': ''Robert'', ''age'': ''28'', ''city'': ''Mumbai''}