What I am trying to do is the following.
I have objects that could live in multiple documents, and although I am not sure if this is best practice, I am using their ObjectId as pointers.
Document A
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "51a02dade4b02780aeee5ab7"
},
"title": "My Document A",
"artifacts": [
"51a81d8ee4b084336fea2d33",
"asdfsdfe4b084336fea2d33"
]
}
Document B
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "51a02dade4b02780aeee5ab7"
},
"title": "My Document A",
"artifacts": [
"51a81d8ee4b084336fea2d33",
"123454b084336fea2d33"
]
}
The individual artifact looks something like. If this artifact changes then there is no need to update the documents that it lives in:
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "51a81d8ee4b084336fea2d33"
},
"title": "Artifact A",
"media": {
"player": "video",
"source": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12334456"
}
}
What I'd like to do, is get an expanded list of all the artifacts shown in either doc A or doc B in an array something like:
[{
"_id": {
"$oid": "51a81d8ee4b084336fea2d33"
},
"title": "Artifact A",
"media": {
"player": "video",
"source": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12334456"
}
},
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "123455e4b084336fea2d33"
},
"title": "Artifact B",
"media": {
"player": "video",
"source": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12334456"
}
}]
The way I have done it in the past is by POSTing from client a list of Ids and then using
{_id: { $in: userQuestArray} }
but if i am constantly posting back to node from the client it seems a bit inefficient. Especially if the array I am posting is hundreds of items long.
populatefeature might solve your problem. It provides functions in mongoose to link documents, using mongoose Schema, and tools that help update/query using those relationships between documents. mongoosejs.com/docs/populate.html – Matt Bakaitis 4 hours ago