How to get the MongoDB server version using PyMongo

If you’re using server-side features of MongoDB that have a minimum version requirement (like pushing a unique value to a list), it is a good idea to make sure you have the required version running on the server. To check the version of the MongoDB server using PyMongo, you can use something like this:

import pymongo

connection = pymongo.Connection()
serverVersion = tuple(connection.server_info()['version'].split('.'))
requiredVersion = tuple("1.3.3".split("."))
if serverVersion < requiredVersion:
    # handle the error
    return 1
...

It’s important to note that you must connect to the admin database to determine the version number. Otherwise, you will probably run into something like this:

pymongo.errors.OperationFailure: command SON([('buildinfo', 1)]) failed: access denied

If you need to check the version of the server from the interactive prompt, run the following from the mongo prompt:

> db.version()
1.4.2