Get the maximum mark records from a collection with documents in MongoDB

To get the maximum mark records from a collection in MongoDB, use the $sort and $limit aggregation operators to sort documents by marks in descending order and retrieve only the top records.

Syntax

db.collection.aggregate([
    { $sort: { marks: -1 } },
    { $limit: numberOfRecords }
]);

Sample Data

Let us create a collection with student documents containing marks −

db.students.insertMany([
    { "StudentName": "Chris", "marks": 85 },
    { "StudentName": "Bob", "marks": 92 },
    { "StudentName": "David", "marks": 78 },
    { "StudentName": "Mike", "marks": 95 },
    { "StudentName": "Alice", "marks": 88 }
]);

{
    "acknowledged": true,
    "insertedIds": [
        ObjectId("..."),
        ObjectId("..."),
        ObjectId("..."),
        ObjectId("..."),
        ObjectId("...")
    ]
}

Display all documents from the collection −

db.students.find();

{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Chris", "marks": 85 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Bob", "marks": 92 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "David", "marks": 78 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Mike", "marks": 95 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Alice", "marks": 88 }

Example: Get Top 3 Maximum Mark Records

Following is the query to get the maximum mark records from the collection −

db.students.aggregate([
    { $sort: { marks: -1 } },
    { $limit: 3 }
]);

{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Mike", "marks": 95 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Bob", "marks": 92 }
{ "_id": ObjectId("..."), "StudentName": "Alice", "marks": 88 }

How It Works

• $sort: { marks: -1 } − Sorts documents in descending order by marks field
• $limit: 3 − Restricts the output to only the first 3 documents after sorting
• The combination returns the top 3 students with highest marks

Conclusion

Use $sort with -1 for descending order followed by $limit in an aggregation pipeline to efficiently retrieve the maximum mark records from a MongoDB collection.