mongodb shell login - password contains special characters like -(hyphen) and '(single quote)

Question

I am trying to login to mongodb database using mongodb shell, and if the password contains any special characters like -(hyphen) or '(single quote) , it gives error - Error parsing command line: unrecognised option '-8B'df5='.

mongo -u username -p -8B'df5= --authenticationDatabase admin

Kindly help

Answer 1

The manual for the deprecated mongo command makes it clear that the preferred way to pass a connection string is as a URI. https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/connection-string/ makes it clear that usernames and passwords can be passed as part of that URI.

mongo mongodb://username:-8B%27df5%3D@hostname/admin

%27 is the URL-escaping version of '

%3D is the URL-escaping version of =

Python's urllib.quote() is one of the many ways you can look up these mappings yourself.

Answer 2

It has nothing to do with (the deprecated) mongo shell, instead it has something to do the way your operating system shell parsing the parameters. You may choose to:

• keep using single quote, but you have to escape the single quote inside the string with backslash.
• use double quote to enclose the string

So you may use below command instead:

mongo -u username -p '-8B\'df5=' --authenticationDatabase admin

or

mongo -u username -p "-8B'df5=" --authenticationDatabase admin