I see that one way we use populate is to put one document from another collection into a "parent" collection. I was just going through this question and I was hoping someone could explain the answer to me better. And show me a practical use. Here is an example from the answer.
var PersonSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
t: String
}, {collection: 'persons'});
var User = mongoose.model('User', PersonSchema.extend({
_id: String,
name: String
}));
var ParentSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
s: String
}, {collection: 'parent'});
var Like = mongoose.model('Like', ParentSchema.extend({
_id: String,
user_id: {
type: String,
ref: 'User'
}
}));
Insert Data into DB,
var user = new User({
t: 't1',
_id: '1234567',
name: 'test'
});
var like = new Like({
s: 's1',
_id: '23456789',
});
user.save(function(err, u){
if(err)
console.log(err);
else {
like.user_id = u._id;
console.log(like);
like.save(function(err) {
if (err)
console.log(err);
else
console.log('save like and user....');
});
}
});
Query by
Like.findOne({}).populate('user_id').exec(function(err, doc) {
if (err)
console.log(err);
else
console.log(doc);
});
And the result is
{ _id: '23456789',
__t: 'Like',
user_id: { _id: '1234567', __t: 'User', t: 't1', name: 'test', __v: 0 },
s: 's1',
__v: 0 }
QUESTION
where does __t: 'User' come from?
I was thinking that using populate() or ref that would separate the collections but it looks like at the end the like collection has the users document in it. I think I wanted to use populate so I could make a document smaller.
3.Also if someone really wanted to help explain this to me I have an example that I have been trying to do and I don't know if I should use populate but if I should it would be great if you show me how. Here is the example.
You have
doctors
patients
information about the practice
There could be like a 1000 doctors and lots of patients for each doctor. and the information will be about their practice(like how many employees they have). so I feel that there should be a separation of concern.(one reason is to prevent a single document for a patient from getting to big). So If we're going with the populate method If you could explain how to set it up for this case. I guess I could have a doctor as a parent and a child refs for patients and another child refs for information about practice. so maybe there should be an array of objectId for the patients and an array for Other information
Q1: where does __t: 'User' come from?
Refer to this link.
mongoose now includes schema inheritance and discriminatorKey functionality that breaks mongoose-schema-extend. mongoose now sets the discriminatorKey schema option to __t by default
Q2: I was thinking that using populate() or ref that would separate the collections but it looks like at the end the like collection has the users document in it. I think I wanted to use populate so I could make a document smaller.
It seems you misunderstand the meaning of Population. There are no joins in MongoDB but sometimes we still want references to documents in other collections. This is where population comes in. Population is the process of automatically replacing the specified paths in the document with document(s) from other collection(s). So populate is not used to make document smaller.
Q3: Doctor, Patient, Practice
Schema could be as following:
var DoctorSchema = new Schema ({
name: String,
// ... other field
});
var PatientSchema = new Schema ({
name: String,
doctor: {type: Schema.ObjectId,
ref: 'Doctor'}
});
var PracticeSchema = new Schema ({
ff: String,
patientId: {type: Schema.ObjectId,
ref: 'Patient'},
doctorId: {type: Schema.ObjectId,
ref: 'Doctor'}
});
As for schema, it is hard to determine which schema is better or not, (with populate or without it). The first thing we should consider is to meet our query requirement, to make the query easy. The design of mongoDB to make the query more efficiently. So our schema should meet it.
Related
In Mongoose, I have two collections, with one referencing the other. Is it possible to have a find query that selects records based on a value in the other. An example of what I am try to get at (not actual schemas):
const CarModelSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
name: String,
brand: { type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'CarBrand' }
});
const CarBrandSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
name: String,
country: String
});
I then want to perform a query of the form, without needing to do two queries:
CarModelSchema.find({ 'brand.country': 'GER' });
So far I haven't been able to make this work, so I am wondering whether this can be done in Mongo or whether I am approaching it wrong?
Yes it is possible.
I realize you don't have models for your schemas so add them like this:
const CarModel = mongoose.model('CarModel', CarModelSchema);
const CarBrand = mongoose.model('CarBrand', CarBrandSchema);
Also brands should be defined like this:
brand: [{ type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'CarBrand' }] //added the brackets
You can then run a find query to filter by country by doing the following:
CarModel.
find(...).
populate({
path: 'brand',
match: { country: { $eq: 'GER' }},
// You can even select the field you want using select like below,
select: 'name -_id',
//Even limit the amount of documents returned in the array
options: { limit: 5 }
}).
exec();
And that should do it, as long as the ObjectIds saved in brands array in the CarModel collection are valid or exist.
Using match in your population will do the work.
CarModel.find()
.populate({
path: 'brand',
model: CarBrandModel,
match: { country: { $eq: 'GER' }},
})
.exec()
Keep in mind you have to define CarModel and CarBrandModel like this:
const CarModel = mongoose.model('CarModel', CarModelSchema)
const CarBrandModel = mongoose.model('CarBrandModel', CarBrandSchema)
Yes, you are doing it wrong.
In CarModelSchema.brand there is not string saved, there is ObjectId saved, therefore you have to find that ObjectId (the reference).
You can do it manually - first finding the CarBrandSchema.find({ 'country': 'GER' }); and then use its ObjectId (=_id), or you can use https://mongoosejs.com/docs/populate.html to populate your CarModel with the CarBrand object.
I would like to know how to keep track of the values of a document in MongoDB.
It's a MongoDB Database with a Node and Express backend.
Say I have a document, which is part of the Patients collection.
{
"_id": "4k2lK49938d82kL",
"firstName": "John",
"objective": "Burn fat"
}
Then I edit the "objective" property, so the document results like this:
{
"_id": "4k2lK49938d82kL",
"firstName": "John",
"objective": "Gain muscle"
}
What's the best/most efficient way to keep track of that change? In other words, I would like to know that the "objective" property had the value "Burn fat" in the past, and access it in the future.
Thanks a lot!
Maintaining/tracking history in the same document is not all recommended. As the document size will keep on increasing leading to
probably if there are too many updates, 16mb document size limit
Performance degrades
Instead, you should maintain a separate collection for history. You might have use hibernates' Javers or envers for auditing for your relational databases. if not you can check how they work. A separate table (xyz_AUD) is maintained for each table (xyz). For each row (with primary key abc) in xyz table, there exist multiple rows in xyz_AUD table, where each row is version of that row.
Moreover, Javers also support MongoDB auditing. If you are using java you can directly use it. No need to write your own logic.
Refer - https://nullbeans.com/auditing-using-spring-boot-mongodb-and-javers/
One more thing, Javers Envers Hibernate are java libraries. But I'm sure for other programming languages also, similar libraries will be present.
There is a mongoose plugin as well -
https://www.npmjs.com/package/mongoose-audit (quite oudated 4 years)
https://github.com/nassor/mongoose-history#readme (better)
Maybe you can change the type of "objective" to array and track the changes in it. the last one of the array is the latest value.
Maintain it as a sub-document like below
{
"_id": "4k2lK49938d82kL",
"firstName": "John",
"objective": {
obj1: "Gain muscle",
obj2: "Burn fat"
}
}
You can also maintain it as an array field but remember, mongodb doesn't allow you to maintain uniqueness in an array field and if you plan to index the "objective" field, you'll have to create a multi key index
I think the simplest solution would be to use and update an array:
const patientSchema = new Schema({
firstName: { type: String, required: true },
lastName: { type: String, required: true },
objective: { type: String, required: true }
notes: [{
date: { type: Date, default: Date.now() },
note: { type: String, required: true }
}],
});
Then when you want to update the objective...
const updatePatientObjective = async (req, res) => {
try {
// check if _id and new objective exist in req.body
const { _id, objective, date } = req.body;
if (!_id || !objective) throw "Unable to update patient's objective.";
// make sure provided _id is valid
const existingPatient = await Patient.findOne({ _id });
if (!existingPatient) throw "Unable to locate that patient.";
// pull out objective as previousObjective
const { objective: previousObjective } = existingPatient;
// update patient's objective while pushing
// the previous objective into the notes sub document
await existingPatient.updateOne({
// update current objective
$set { objective },
// push an object with a date and note (previouseObjective)
// into a notes array
$push: {
notes: {
date,
note: previousObjective
},
},
}),
);
// send back response
res
.status(201)
.json({ message: "Successfully updated your objective!" });
} catch (err) {
return res.status(400).json({ err: err.toString() });
}
};
Document will look like:
firstName: "John",
lastName: "Smith",
objective: "Lose body fat.",
notes: [
{
date: 2019-07-19T17:45:43-07:00,
note: "Gain muscle".
},
{
date: 2019-08-09T12:00:38-07:00,
note: "Work on cardio."
}
{
date: 2019-08-29T19:00:38-07:00,
note: "Become a fullstack web developer."
}
...etc
]
Alternatively, if you're worried about document size, then create a separate schema for patient history and reference the user's id (or just store the patient's _id as a string instead of referencing an ObjectId, whichever you prefer):
const patientHistorySchema = new Schema({
_id: { type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: "Patient", required: true },
objective: { type: String, required: true }
});
Then create a new patient history document when the objective is updated...
PatientHistory.create({ _id, objective: previousObjective });
And if you need to access to the patient history documents...
PatientHistory.find({ _id });
i want to build a Mongodb database (Mongoose/Node.js) structure but i face a problem right now. i have two entities. Users and Books and i want to use embedded system(because of lack of joins in mongodb). And my problem is that which of this entities shpuld be an inner value to other.
For example i wiil face this two type of query in my app:
1- Books of an specific user
2- Users of an specific book
Now, Books should be a inner value for Users or contrariwise?
i can do this two:
Users schema:
var schema = new mongoose.Schema({
use_name: String,
user_family: String,
user_books: { type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'books' }
});
Or this:
Books Schema:
var schema = new mongoose.Schema({
book_name: String,
book_lang: String,
book_user: { type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'users' }
});
which is better? which is standard approach?
if i use both of them, when saving i have to do two save operation. if i has a large database with a lots of collections its gets worse that this...
after a lot of research i find out i have to use embedded system rather that using relation like collections to connect entities to each other, because Mongodb doesn't support joins and has poor support of things like this. embedded system is the correct way for a NoSql database like Mongodb?
Firstly, there's a minor correction that your user_books needs to be an array [].
Secondly, you should only reference one schema into another, otherwise you'll have to add unnecessary complexity in keeping them in sync.
So here's what your schemas should look like:
var UserSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
use_name: String,
user_family: String,
user_books: [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'books' }]
});
var BookSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
book_name: String,
book_lang: String,
});
Now "to fetch users that reads an specific book", you'll query like this:
UserSchema.find({ user_books: book._id })
which will give you all users that have BOOK_ID as (at least) one of their books.
If that's all, I guess you don't need population at all then.
Updated on the issue with $elemMatch query not working:
So as it turned out, we don't actually need $elemMatch with referenced docs array, since it's a simple array of _ids.
user // =>
{
_id: 56351c611ca0d2e81274100a
name: ...
books: [56351c611ca0d2e81274100b, 56351c611ca0d2e81274100c, ...]
}
$elemMatch works with array of objects, and would've been in the case of embedded doc:
var BookSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
book_name: String,
book_lang: String,
});
var UserSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
use_name: String,
user_family: String,
user_books: [BookSchema]
});
Since in this case the document would be like this:
user // =>
{
_id: 56351c611ca0d2e81274100a
name: ...
books: [
{ // each book here has an _id:
_id: 56351c611ca0d2e81274100b,
// this is what `$elemMatch: {_id:` would match for
name: ...
// you could do `$elemMatch: {name:`
lang: ...
// or `$elemMatch: {lang:`
}, {
_id: 56351c611ca0d2e81274100c,
name: ...
lang: ...
}, ...
]
}
This is where $elemMatch query would be needed.
UserSchema.find({ user_books: {$elemMatch: {_id: book._id } } })
I am trying to make a query that returns posts from both Friends and Non-Friends, but ensures Friends Posts are at top of list. What I have now only gets posts from Friends:
Schemas
var Post = mongoose.Schema({
name: String,
user: { type:ObjectId, ref:'User' },
createdAt: { type:Date, default:Date.now }
});
var User = mongoose.Schema({
username: String
});
var Relationship = mongoose.Schema({
from: { type:ObjectId, ref:'User' },
to: { type:ObjectId, ref:'User' }
});
Query looks like
Relationship.find({ from : thisUser },function(err,docs){
if (err) {console.log(err);}
var query = Post.find();
var plucked = _.pluck(docs,'to');
query.where('user').in( plucked );
query.sort('-createdAt');
query.limit(20);
query.skip( 20 * page);
query.exec(function(err,posts){
if (err) {console.log(err);}
res.send(posts);
});
});
The client will grab say 20 posts on each page. So any suggestions on how I can return all posts, but ensure posts by Friends appear first? For instance, if there are 100 posts that meet the query criteria and 30 of those are from friends, the first page and half of the second will all be friends posts (sorted by createdAt).
If I need to redo the schemas and relationships thats fine as well.
What I would have done is to skip the Relationship model all together (if it is not absolutely essential) and have a friends field in User like this instead:
var User = mongoose.Schema({
username: String,
friends: [User],
});
Then you're able to query the friends posts like this:
Post.find({user: {$in: thisUser.friends}}, function(err, posts) {
...
})
And append it with non-friends using $nin instead of $in.
Honestly, the best thing to do is to store the user names with the friendship object. This information is extremely unlikely to change. How many times have you changed your name on Facebook?
I use Mongoose.js and cannot solve problem with 3 level hierarchy document.
There 2 ways to do it.
First - without refs.
C = new Schema({
'title': String,
});
B = new Schema({
'title': String,
'c': [C]
});
A = new Schema({
'title': String,
'b': [B]
});
I need to show C record. How can i populate / find it, knowing only _id of C?
I was try use:
A.findOne({'b.c._id': req.params.c_id}, function(err, a){
console.log(a);
});
But i dont know how to get from returnet a object only c object that i need.
Second if working with refs:
C = new Schema({
'title': String,
});
B = new Schema({
'title': String,
'c': [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'C' }]
});
A = new Schema({
'title': String,
'b': [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'B' }]
});
How to populate all B, C records to get hierarchy?
I was try to use something like this:
A
.find({})
.populate('b')
.populate('b.c')
.exec(function(err, a){
a.forEach(function(single_a){
console.log('- ' + single_a.title);
single_a.b.forEach(function(single_b){
console.log('-- ' + single_b.title);
single_b.c.forEach(function(single_c){
console.log('--- ' + single_c.title);
});
});
});
});
But it will return undefined for single_c.title. I there way to populate it?
Thanks.
As of Mongoose 3.6 the ability to recursively populate related documents in a query has been added. Here is an example of how you might do it:
UserList.findById(listId)
.populate('refUserListItems')
.exec(function(err, doc){
UserListItem.populate(doc.refUserListItems, {path:'refSuggestion'},
function(err, data){
console.log("User List data: %j", doc);
cb(null, doc);
}
);
});
In this case, I am populating an array of id's in 'refUserListItems' with their referenced documents. The result of the query then gets passed into another populate query that references the field of the original populated document that I want to also populate - 'refSuggestion'.
Note the second (internal) populate - this is where the magic happens. You can continue to nest these populates and tack on more and more documents until you have built your graph the way you need it.
It takes a little time to digest how this is working, but if you work through it, it makes sense.
in Mongoose 4 you can populate multilevel like this (even in different database or instance)
A
.find({})
.populate({
path: 'b',
model: 'B',
populate: {
path: 'c',
model: 'C'
}
})
.exec(function(err, a){});
In Mongoose 4 you can populate documents across multiple levels:
Say you have a User schema which keeps track of the user's friends.
var userSchema = new Schema({
name: String,
friends: [{ type: ObjectId, ref: 'User' }]
});
Firstly populate() lets you get a list of user friends. But what if you also wanted a user's friends of friends? In that case, you can specify a populate option to tell mongoose to populate the friends array of all the user's friends:
User.
findOne({ name: 'Val' }).
populate({
path: 'friends',
// Get friends of friends - populate the 'friends' array for every friend
populate: { path: 'friends' }
});
Taken from: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/populate.html#deep-populate
I'm late to this, but I wrote a Mongoose plugin that makes it extremely simple to perform deep model population. For your example, you can do this to populate b and c:
A.find({}, function (err, docs) {
A.deepPopulate(docs, 'b.c', cb)
}
You can also specify Mongoose populate options for each of the populated paths, like this:
A.deepPopulate(docs, 'b.c', {
b: {
select: 'name'
}
}, cb)
Check out the plugin documentation for more information.