Create a collection (Go)

Creates a new collection in a database.

Ready to write code? See the examples for this method to get started. If you are new to the Data API, check out the quickstart.

Result

Creates a collection with the specified parameters.

Returns a Collection object. You can use this object to work with documents in the collection.

Parameters

You cannot edit a collection’s definition after you create the collection.

Use the CreateCollection method, which belongs to the Db type.

Method signature 
func (d *Db) CreateCollection(
  ctx context.Context,
  name string,
  opts ...options.CreateCollectionOption
) (*Collection, error)
Name Type Summary

ctx

context.Context

The context for the operation.

name

string

The name of the new collection.

Collection names must follow these rules:

  • Can contain letters, numbers, and underscores

  • Cannot exceed 48 characters

  • Must be unique within the keyspace

opts

…​options.CreateCollectionOption

Optional. The options for this method.

See Methods of the CreateCollectionOption builder for more details.
Methods of the CreateCollectionOption builder
Method Summary

UpdateVector(v …​VectorOption)

Optional. The vector configuration for the collection. This includes things like the vector dimension, similarity metric, and source model.

Required for vector search.

For an example, see Create a collection that can store vector embeddings.

The VectorOptions builder has the following methods:

  • SetDimension(v int): The dimension for vector embeddings in the collection. This should match the dimension of the vector that your embedding model produces. Optional if you specify a model that has a default dimension value.

  • SetMetric(v string): Optional. The similarity metric to use for vector search. Can be one of: options.MetricCosine, options.MetricDotProduct, options.MetricEuclidean.

  • SetSourceModel(v string): Optional. The model used to generate the vector embeddings. This enables certain vector optimizations on the index. Can be one of: ada002, bert, cohere-v3, gecko, nv-qa-4, openai-v3-large, openai-v3-small, other.

UpdateLexical(v …​LexicalOption)

Optional. The lexical search configuration for the collection.

Only collections in databases in the AWS us-east-2 region support this parameter.

The LexicalOptions builder has the following methods:

For examples, see Create a collection that supports lexicographical matching.

Default: Lexical search is enabled and uses the standard Apache Lucene™ analyzer.

SetDefaultIdType(t options.CollectionIdType)

UpdateDefaultId(v …​CollectionDefaultIdOption)

Optional. Specifies the default ID type for documents in the collection. This is used when you insert a document without an _id field.

Supported ID types:

  • objectId: Each autogenerated _id value is an objectId as provided by the bson library.

  • uuidv7: Each autogenerated _id value is a version 7 UUID. This is designed as a replacement for version 1 time UUID, and it is recommended for use in new systems.

  • uuidv6: Each autogenerated _id value is a version 6 UUID. This is field-compatible with version 1 time UUIDs, and it supports lexicographical sorting.

  • uuid: Each autogenerated _id value is a version 4 UUID. This type is analogous to the uuid type and functions in Apache Cassandra®.

For examples, see Create a collection and specify the default ID format.

For more information, see Document IDs (Go).

Default: Each autogenerated _id value is a string form of a version 4 UUID

SetIndexingAllow(v …​string)

SetIndexingDeny(v …​string)

Optional. The selective indexing configuration for the collection.

You must use & to escape any . or & in field names in the indexing clause. You cannot use & to escape any other characters. Dot notation, which is used to reference nested fields, should not be escaped. For more information, see Work with . and & in field names (Go).

For examples, see Create a collection and specify which fields to index and Create a collection and specify which fields shouldn’t be indexed.

Default: All fields of all documents.

SetKeyspace(v string)

Optional if you specified a working keyspace when you created the Db object. The keyspace in which to create the collection.

Default: The working keyspace set when you created the Db object, if one was provided.

UpdateAPIOptions(v …​APIOption)

Optional. General API options for this operation, including the timeout.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate how to create a collection.

Create a collection that is not vector-enabled

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Create a collection that can store vector embeddings

Collections that are vector-enabled can store vector embeddings in the reserved $vector field and work with vector search.

For optimal vector search results, you should specify the dimension, metric, and source model of your vector embeddings. All vector embeddings in a collection should be generated by the same model with the same dimensions. The source model can be one of: ada002, bert, cohere-v3, gecko, nv-qa-4, openai-v3-large, openai-v3-small, other.

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
		options.CreateCollection().
			UpdateVector(options.Vector().
				SetDimension(1024).
				SetMetric(options.MetricCosine).
				SetSourceModel("nv-qa-4")),
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Create a collection that supports lexicographical matching

If you want to use lexicographical matching to find documents in your collection, you must create a collection that has lexical enabled. Your collection must also be in a database in the AWS us-east-2 region.

Lexical is enabled by default when you create a collection in a database in the AWS us-east-2 region, but you can optionally configure the lexical analyzer.

For configuration details about the lexical analyzer, see Configure and use SAI text analyzers with CQL. The following example uses a configuration suitable for English text.

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
		options.CreateCollection().
			UpdateLexical(options.Lexical().
				SetEnabled(true).
				SetCustomAnalyzer(map[string]any{
					"tokenizer": map[string]any{
						"name": "standard",
						"args": map[string]any{},
					},
					"filters": []map[string]any{
						{"name": "lowercase"},
						{"name": "stop"},
						{"name": "porterstem"},
						{"name": "asciifolding"},
					},
					"charFilters": []map[string]any{},
				})),
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Create a collection and specify the default ID format

For more information about the default ID format, see Document IDs (Go). For allowed values, see the Parameters.

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
		options.CreateCollection().
			SetDefaultIdType(options.CollectionIdTypeObjectId),
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Create a collection and specify which fields to index

For more information about selective indexing, see Indexes in collections (Go).

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
		options.CreateCollection().SetIndexingAllow("city", "country"),
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Create a collection and specify which fields shouldn’t be indexed

For more information about selective indexing, see Indexes in collections (Go).

package main

import (
	"context"
	"log"

	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra"
	"github.com/datastax/astra-db-go/v2/astra/options"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()

	// Get an existing database
	client := astra.NewClient(
		options.API().SetEnvironment(options.EnvironmentHCD),
	)

	database := client.Database(
		"API_ENDPOINT",
		options.API().
			SetUsernamePasswordTokenProvider(
				"USERNAME",
				"PASSWORD",
			).
			SetKeyspace("KEYSPACE_NAME"),
	)

	// Create a collection
	_, err := database.CreateCollection(
		ctx,
		"COLLECTION_NAME",
		options.CreateCollection().SetIndexingDeny("city", "country"),
	)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

Client reference

For more information, see the client reference.

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