Filter documents by creation time stored in ObjectId

Introduction#

Includes pymongo query examples to filter documents by timestamp encapsulated in ObjectId

Documents created in the last 60 seconds

How to find documents created 60 seconds ago

seconds = 60

gen_time = datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds)
dummy_id = ObjectId.from_datetime(gen_time)

db.CollectionName.find({"_id": {"$gte": dummy_id}})

If you’re in a different timezone, you may need to offset the datetime to UTC

seconds = 60

gen_time = datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds)
# converts datetime to UTC
gen_time=datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(gen_time.timestamp())

dummy_id = ObjectId.from_datetime(gen_time)

db.Collection.find({"_id": {"$gte": dummy_id}})