Get String Array From Pymongo Query

I need to get an array with the values from the field 'colname'. I can't return a Cursor, just the array of values. Is there a way to query this array without having to loop the Cu

Solution 1:

You can do this with the .aggregate() method by $grouping your documents by None

cursor = entomo.aggregate([
    {'$group': {
        '_id': None, 
        'data': {'$push': '$colname'}
    }}
])

From there, you simply consume the cursor using next.

entomo_array = next(cursor)['data']

But if 'colname' is unique within the collection, you can simply use the the distinct method.

entomo_array = entomo.distinct('colname')

Solution 2:

If the 'colname' field has distinct values or if you do not care about duplicate values you can use distinct function. For your example:

entomo_array = entomo.find().distinct('colname')