Tutorial: Query data in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL

APPLIES TO: NoSQL

Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL supports querying documents using the built-in query syntax. This article provides a sample document and two sample queries and results.

This article covers the following tasks:

Prerequisites

• An Azure Cosmos DB account, database, and container. If you don't have these resources, see Create an Azure Cosmos DB account, database, container, and items from the Azure portal.

You can run the queries using the Azure Cosmos DB Explorer in the Azure portal. You can also run queries by using the REST API or various SDKs.

For more information about queries, see Queries in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL.

Sample document

The queries in this article use the following sample document.

{
  "id": "WakefieldFamily",
  "parents": [
    { "familyName": "Wakefield", "givenName": "Robin" },
    { "familyName": "Miller", "givenName": "Ben" }
  ],
  "children": [
    {
      "familyName": "Merriam", 
      "givenName": "Jesse", 
      "gender": "female", "grade": 1,
      "pets": [
          { "givenName": "Goofy" },
          { "givenName": "Shadow" }
      ]
    },
    { 
      "familyName": "Miller", 
        "givenName": "Lisa", 
        "gender": "female", 
        "grade": 8 
    }
  ],
  "address": { "state": "NY", "county": "Manhattan", "city": "NY" },
  "creationDate": 1431620462,
  "isRegistered": false
}

Select all fields and apply a filter

Given the sample family document, the following query returns the documents where the ID field matches WakefieldFamily. Since it's a SELECT * statement, the output of the query is the complete JSON document:

Query:

SELECT * 
FROM Families f 
WHERE f.id = "WakefieldFamily"

Results:

{
  "id": "WakefieldFamily",
  "parents": [
    { "familyName": "Wakefield", "givenName": "Robin" },
    { "familyName": "Miller", "givenName": "Ben" }
  ],
  "children": [
    {
      "familyName": "Merriam", 
      "givenName": "Jesse", 
      "gender": "female", "grade": 1,
      "pets": [
          { "givenName": "Goofy" },
          { "givenName": "Shadow" }
      ]
    },
    { 
      "familyName": "Miller", 
        "givenName": "Lisa", 
        "gender": "female", 
        "grade": 8 
    }
  ],
  "address": { "state": "NY", "county": "Manhattan", "city": "NY" },
  "creationDate": 1431620462,
  "isRegistered": false
}

Select a cross-product of a child collection field

The next query returns all the given names of children in the family whose ID matches WakefieldFamily.

Query:

SELECT c.givenName 
FROM Families f 
JOIN c IN f.children 
WHERE f.id = 'WakefieldFamily'

Results:

[
  {
    "givenName": "Jesse"
  },
  {
    "givenName": "Lisa"
  }
]

Next step