Get the latest record from mongodb collection

Question

I want to know the most recent record in a collection. How to do that?

Note: I know the following command line queries works:

1. db.test.find().sort(         


        

Answer 1

If you are using auto-generated Mongo Object Ids in your document, it contains timestamp in it as first 4 bytes using which latest doc inserted into the collection could be found out. I understand this is an old question, but if someone is still ending up here looking for one more alternative.

db.collectionName.aggregate(
[{$group: {_id: null, latestDocId: { $max: "$_id"}}}, {$project: {_id: 0, latestDocId: 1}}])

Above query would give the _id for the latest doc inserted into the collection