Arangoimport Details

The most convenient method to import a lot of data into ArangoDB is to use the arangoimport command-line tool. It allows you to bulk import data records from a file into a database collection. Multiple files can be imported into the same or different collections by invoking it multiple times.

Importing into an Edge Collection

Arangoimport can also be used to import data into an existing edge collection. The import data must, for each edge to import, contain at least the _from and _to attributes. These indicate which other two documents the edge should connect. It is necessary that these attributes are set for all records, and point to valid document IDs in existing collections.

Example

{ "_from" : "users/1234", "_to" : "users/4321", "desc" : "1234 is connected to 4321" }

Note: The edge collection must already exist when the import is started. Using the --create-collection flag will not work because arangoimport will always try to create a regular document collection if the target collection does not exist.

Attribute Naming and Special Attributes

Attributes whose names start with an underscore are treated in a special way by ArangoDB:

• the optional _key attribute contains the document’s key. If specified, the value must be formally valid (e.g. must be a string and conform to the naming conventions). Additionally, the key value must be unique within the collection the import is run for.
• _from: when importing into an edge collection, this attribute contains the id of one of the documents connected by the edge. The value of _from must be a syntactically valid document id and the referred collection must exist.
• _to: when importing into an edge collection, this attribute contains the id of the other document connected by the edge. The value of _to must be a syntactically valid document id and the referred collection must exist.
• _rev: this attribute contains the revision number of a document. However, the revision numbers are managed by ArangoDB and cannot be specified on import. Thus any value in this attribute is ignored on import.

If you import values into _key, you should make sure they are valid and unique.

When importing data into an edge collection, you should make sure that all import documents can _from and _to and that their values point to existing documents.

To avoid specifying complete document ids (consisting of collection names and document keys) for _from and _to values, there are the options --from-collection-prefix and --to-collection-prefix. If specified, these values will be automatically prepended to each value in _from (or _to resp.). This allows specifying only document keys inside _from and/or _to.

Example

arangoimport --from-collection-prefix users --to-collection-prefix products ...

Importing the following document will then create an edge between users/1234 and products/4321:

{ "_from" : "1234", "_to" : "4321", "desc" : "users/1234 is connected to products/4321" }

Updating existing documents

By default, arangoimport will try to insert all documents from the import file into the specified collection. In case the import file contains documents that are already present in the target collection (matching is done via the _key attributes), then a default arangoimport run will not import these documents and complain about unique key constraint violations.

However, arangoimport can be used to update or replace existing documents in case they already exist in the target collection. It provides the command-line option --on-duplicate to control the behavior in case a document is already present in the database.

The default value of --on-duplicate is error. This means that when the import file contains a document that is present in the target collection already, then trying to re-insert a document with the same _key value is considered an error, and the document in the database will not be modified.

Other possible values for --on-duplicate are:

• update: each document present in the import file that is also present in the target collection already will be updated by arangoimport. update will perform a partial update of the existing document, modifying only the attributes that are present in the import file and leaving all other attributes untouched.

  The values of system attributes _id, _key, _rev, _from and _to cannot be updated or replaced in existing documents.

• replace: each document present in the import file that is also present in the target collection already will be replace by arangoimport. replace will replace the existing document entirely, resulting in a document with only the attributes specified in the import file.

  The values of system attributes _id, _key, _rev, _from and _to cannot be updated or replaced in existing documents.

• ignore: each document present in the import file that is also present in the target collection already will be ignored and not modified in the target collection.

When --on-duplicate is set to either update or replace, arangoimport will return the number of documents updated/replaced in the updated return value. When set to another value, the value of updated will always be zero. When --on-duplicate is set to ignore, arangoimport will return the number of ignored documents in the ignored return value. When set to another value, ignored will always be zero.

It is possible to perform a combination of inserts and updates/replaces with a single arangoimport run. When --on-duplicate is set to update or replace, all documents present in the import file will be inserted into the target collection provided they are valid and do not already exist with the specified _key. Documents that are already present in the target collection (identified by _key attribute) will instead be updated/replaced.

Result output

An arangoimport import run will print out the final results on the command line. It will show the

• number of documents created (created)
• number of documents updated/replaced (updated/replaced, only non-zero if --on-duplicate was set to update or replace, see below)
• number of warnings or errors that occurred on the server side (warnings/errors)
• number of ignored documents (only non-zero if --on-duplicate was set to ignore).

Example

created:          2
warnings/errors:  0
updated/replaced: 0
ignored:          0

For CSV and TSV imports, the total number of input file lines read will also be printed (lines read).

arangoimport will also print out details about warnings and errors that happened on the server-side (if any).

Automatic pacing with busy or low throughput disk subsystems

Arangoimport has an automatic pacing algorithm that limits how fast data is sent to the ArangoDB servers. This pacing algorithm exists to prevent the import operation from failing due to slow responses.

Google Compute and other VM providers limit the throughput of disk devices. Google’s limit is more strict for smaller disk rentals, than for larger. Specifically, a user could choose the smallest disk space and be limited to 3 Mbytes per second. Similarly, other users’ processes on the shared VM can limit available throughput of the disk devices.

The automatic pacing algorithm adjusts the transmit block size dynamically based upon the actual throughput of the server over the last 20 seconds. Further, each thread delivers its portion of the data in mostly non-overlapping chunks. The thread timing creates intentional windows of non-import activity to allow the server extra time for meta operations.

Automatic pacing intentionally does not use the full throughput of a disk device. An unlimited (really fast) disk device might not need pacing. Raising the number of threads via the --threads X command line to any value of X greater than 2 will increase the total throughput used.

Automatic pacing frees the user from adjusting the throughput used to match available resources. It is disabled by manually specifying any --batch-size. 16777216 was the previous default for --batch-size. Having --batch-size too large can lead to transmitted data piling-up on the server, resulting in a TimeoutError.

The pacing algorithm works successfully with MMFiles with disks limited to read and write throughput as small as 1 Mbyte per second. The algorithm works successfully with RocksDB with disks limited to read and write throughput as small as 3 Mbyte per second.