How to read Mongodb entries in plaintext? I'm testing mongodb on a local machine for the first time, and I just want to see the actual plaintext contents of a database entry.

Started the mongo console:

$ mongo


Set dbs:

&gt; use &lt;my dbs name&gt;


Searching entries:

&gt; db.&lt;collection name&gt;.find({"_id": "486b4ca55b144b119f4551417c5798c8"})

{ "_id" : "486b4ca55b144b119f4551417c5798c8", "date" : ISODate("2017-04-20T05:47:06.176Z"), "content" : ObjectId("58f84b5a0318762cb6e230a6"), "digest" : "d064a874c872d75f6ab67c04d8b79b26f65f9b4f", "short" : "5f9b4f", "size" : 2374694 }


This is as far as I've gotten. The entries are pastebin uploads. I'm able to locate entries with various search queries but it doesn't actually show me what was uploaded. Is this possible? Am I going about this the hard way?
You are seeing "plain text" documents right now, in json format. Command db.coll.find() shows all documents (in batch of 20 documents). If you want those word wrapped (easier to read) add .pretty() to end of line 

db.coll.find().pretty()


of course all these documents are in bson (binary) format in database and if you want to see that, use mongoexport.

When you insert document, if you don't specify _id, it is added automatically. Rest of document is just like you inserted it.