MongoDB Patterns : The 13th record – Lost & Found

You suddenly realize that you cannot find a few records in your production MongoDB & you want to restore them
- The pattern assumes that you know which records to restore ie you know couple of unique field values in the lost records
Our use case : In our system we have lots of interesting Fact Tables & System Collections. While these collections are small they are very complex & strategic to the application (the why is a topic for another day, another pattern). And we know how many records are there in these collections.
- Few days ago we realized that we have only 12 records in one of our system collection; it should have 13. We know which record is missing, but it is not easy to recreate.
- Luckily I have been backing up the database regularly.
- So, the mission if I choose to accept, is to find the 13th record from the latest backup that contains it and restore the record to our prod database

Backup command we have been using:
- mongodump –verbose –host <host_name> –port <host_port>
- This creates a snapshot under the <dump> directory. I usually rename it as mongodump2012-MM-DD
Start a local instance on mongo – mongod
Restore the database from the last backup (for example mongodump-2012-08-21) locally
Check to see if the missing record is in this backup and find the _id of the record using command line. If not try the next to last backup – for example mongodump-2012-08-17. (In our case, I found it in the next to last)
Copy the record to lostandfound collection
- db.<collection_where_the_record_is>.find({“_id”:<id_of_the_record>).forEach( function(x){db.lostandfound.insert(x)} );
Export the collection
- mongoexport -v -d <database_where_the_lostandfound_is> -c lostandfound -o paradise_regained.json
Import the collection to the prod database
- ~/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2012-05-14/bin/mongoimport –verbose -u <user_name> -p <password> -h <host_name:port_number> -d <production_database> -c <collection_where_the_record_was_lost> –file paradise_regained.json
Check & verify that the correct document is recovered using command line

My missives