Looking for a way to shard a MongoDB collection from within Python code

Question

I'm searching for a way to remotely perform sharding on an existing collection, from within a python (2.7) program. I wasn't able to find an API that performs that (pymongo), or maybe just wasn't looking good enough. Is such thing possible? Thanks in advance

Accepted Answer

Follow the instructions for setting up a sharded cluster, up to the point where you connect the "mongo" shell to the mongos server and say:

```
sh.enableSharding("<database>")
```

Instead, view the code for `enableSharding` by just typing the command without parentheses:

```
sh.enableSharding
```

You can see that it executes `{ enableSharding : dbname }` on the "admin" DB, so do that with pymongo:

```
client = pymongo.MongoClient()
client.admin.command('enableSharding', 'dbname')
```

Replace 'dbname' with your database name, obviously. Repeat to shard a collection. Get the code from the shell:

```
sh.shardCollection
```

And execute the same command in Python:

```
client.admin.command('shardCollection', 'dbname.collectionname', key={'shardkey': 1})
```

Looking for a way to shard a MongoDB collection from within Python code

Solution

Problem