Import into MongoDB — CSV, Excel & PDF

• Overview
• From
• Into

Importing for your users — or for yourself?

Building a product on MongoDB? Your product’s store is MongoDB and your users bring files — this page is your integration guide: mapping, validation and review up front, and your handler writes documents that already fit the collection. Read on.

Just trying to load your own file into MongoDB? You have the file and the collection; the file is the problem — renamed headers, merged columns, a PDF where a spreadsheet should be. See the wizard handle genuinely messy files in the playground (free, no signup). And a run-it-yourself importer is in the works: your own connection string, runs on your machine, every row staged for review — and revertible after it lands. Join the waitlist.

Goal: your users bring the file they have — CSV, Excel, even a PDF or a scan — and clean records land in MongoDB without leaving your product, and without you writing a mapping/validation UI. The pattern is the same every time: embed → validate → deliver. Mildport handles the first two; your webhook handler owns the write into MongoDB.

1. Embed the importer

<mildport-import
  api-base-url="https://imports.your-infra.example"
  license-key="SIGNED_TENANT_KEY"
  catalog-key="contacts"
></mildport-import>

2. Publish a catalog that mirrors MongoDB

The schema lives in a target catalog, not in host code. Create it in the catalog editor (/admin/catalogs on your engine, or embed <mildport-catalog-editor>), match the collection you will write, and publish. The widget loads that published catalog by catalog-key.

Use dotted keys that match the document shape (contacts.email, contacts.last_name). Mark the fields your unique indexes require so a duplicate does not surface as a write error after apply.

Users then upload anything — renamed headers, six languages, XLSX/ODS, even PDF tables — and Mildport’s deterministic matcher plus the review step produce typed, validated rows.

Need the schema computed per user at runtime, or versioned with your app? That’s the schema-as-code path — pass targets from host code instead of catalog-key.

3. Deliver from your webhook

Clean rows arrive on your signed apply webhook; your handler writes to MongoDB:

bulkWrite with upserts on your natural key — e.g. { updateOne: { filter: { email }, update: { $set: doc }, upsert: true } }

MongoDB-specific gotchas

• pick a natural key (email, externalId) and upsert on it — the signed webhook retries deliveries, so the handler MUST be idempotent.
• index that key before the first big import, not after.
• insert typed values (real Date objects, numbers), not strings — the importer’s typed columns make this a one-line conversion.

Why not hand-rolled import?

mongoimport is ops tooling for people with shell access. Your users need mapping, validation and review in the product — and your handler needs documents that already fit the collection’s shape.

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Try the flow first: the playground (no signup), then the Quickstart and target catalogs. Prices are published — hosted and flat-annual self-host — at mildport.com/#pricing.