Mastering MongoDB 4.x - Second Edition

The differences between scripting for the mongo shell and using it directly

When writing scripts for the mongo shell, we cannot use the shell helpers. MongoDB's commands, such as use <database_name>, show collections, and other helpers are built into the shell and so are not available from the JavaScript context where our scripts will get executed. Fortunately, there are equivalents to them that are available from the JavaScript execution context, as shown in the following table:

Shell helpers	JavaScript equivalents
show dbs, show databases	db.adminCommand('listDatabases')
use <database_name>	db = db.getSiblingDB('<database_name>')
show collections	db.getCollectionNames()
show users	db.getUsers()
show roles ...