How to drop or delete a collection in MongoDB?

So either of these are valid ways to do it:

mongo <dbname> --eval 'db.<collection>.drop()'
#     ^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^

db.<collection>.drop()
#  ^^^^^^^^^^^^

For example, for a collection mycollection in a database mydb you would say:

mongo mydb --eval 'db.mycollection.drop()'

db.mycollection.drop()

This is the way I fully tested it, creating a database mydb with a collection hello.

Create a collection mycollection:

> db.createCollection("mycollection")
{ "ok" : 1 }

Show all the collections there:

> db.getCollectionNames()
[ "mycollection", "system.indexes" ]

Insert some dummy data:

> db.mycollection.insert({'a':'b'})
WriteResult({ "nInserted" : 1 })

Make sure it was inserted:

> db.mycollection.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("55849b22317df91febf39fa9"), "a" : "b" }

Delete the collection and make sure it is not present any more:

> db.mycollection.drop()
true
> db.getCollectionNames()
[ "system.indexes" ]

This also works (I am not repeating the previous commands, since it is just about recreating the database and the collection):

$ mongo mydb --eval 'db.mycollection.drop()'
MongoDB shell version: 2.6.10
connecting to: mydb
true
$

We can also use,

> db["collection-name"].drop()

Its useful when you have some special characters in collection name like '-'

To drop a collection users of database mydb:

> use mydb
> db.users.drop()

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