---
title: Capture MongoDB traffic
description: The following settings are specific to the MongoDB protocol. Here is a sample configuration for the mongodb section of the packetbeat.yml config file:...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/beats/packetbeat/configuration-mongodb
products:
  - Beats
  - Packetbeat
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
---

# Capture MongoDB traffic
The following settings are specific to the MongoDB protocol. Here is a sample configuration for the `mongodb` section of the `packetbeat.yml` config file:
```yaml
packetbeat.protocols:
- type: mongodb
  send_request: true
  send_response: true
  max_docs: 0
  max_doc_length: 0
```


## Configuration options

The `max_docs` and `max_doc_length` settings are useful for limiting the amount of data Packetbeat indexes in the `response` fields.
Also see [Common protocol options](https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/beats/packetbeat/common-protocol-options).

### `max_docs`

The maximum number of documents from the response to index in the `response` field. The default is 10. You can set this to 0 to index an unlimited number of documents.
Packetbeat adds a `[...]` line at the end to signify that there were additional documents that weren’t saved because of this setting.

### `max_doc_length`

The maximum number of characters in a single document indexed in the `response` field. The default is 5000. You can set this to 0 to index an unlimited number of characters per document.
If the document is trimmed because of this setting, Packetbeat adds the string `...` at the end of the document.
Note that limiting documents in this way means that they are no longer correctly formatted JSON objects.