$searchMeta¶

Use the $searchMeta aggregation stage to retrieve metadata about a search query instead of the matching documents. This is useful when your application needs information such as the total number of matching documents or facet results for building filters and navigation, without returning the search results themselves. Unlike $search, which returns matching documents, $searchMeta returns a single metadata document and must be the first stage in the aggregation pipeline.

Typical use cases include:

Returning the total number of documents that match a search query.
Generating facet counts for fields such as category, brand, or tags.
Retrieving search metadata to support pagination and search-driven user interfaces.

db.<collection>.aggregate([
  {
    $searchMeta: {
      index: "<index-name>",
      <operator>: {
        <operator-specification>
      },
      count: {
        type: "<total-or-lowerBound>"
      },
      facet: {
        operator: { <operator-specification> },
        facets: { <facet-name>: { <facet-specification> } }
      }
    }
  }
])

$searchMeta accepts these fields:

Field	Required	Description
`index`	Optional	Name of the search index to query. Defaults to `default`.
`<operator>`	Required	One or more query operators, such as `text` or `range`, that define which documents are considered.
`count`	Optional	Returns the number of matching documents. Accepts `type` (`total` for an exact count, or `lowerBound` for a faster approximate count, with an optional `threshold`).
`facet`	Optional	Returns counts grouped by field values. Takes an `operator` to define the query and one or more named `facets`.

Count the number of matching documents¶

Use $searchMeta with the count option to return the total number of documents that match the search query.

Count movies matching ‘adventure’

db.movies.aggregate([
  {
    $searchMeta: {
      index: "default",
      text: {
        query: "adventure",
        path: "plot"
      },
      count: {
        type: "total"
      }
    }
  }
])

Output:

[
  {
    count: { total: Long('128') }
  }
]

$searchMeta¶

Count the number of matching documents¶

Learn more¶