CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaspringmongodbmongodb-query
Sanjeev Kulkarni N
Sanjeev Kulkarni N

Reputation: 381

How to update embedded mongo document using spring mongo data api

    I need some help updating property of embedded collection with JSON structure below       -
     translation
    {
     "_id" : ObjectId("533d4c73d86b8977fda970a9"),
     "_class" : "com.xxx.xxx.translation.domain.Translation",
     "locales" : [ 
       {
        "_id" : "en-US",
        "description" : "English (United States)",
        "isActive" : true
       }, 
      {
        "_id" : "pt-BR",
        "description" : "Portuguese (Brazil)",
        "isActive" : true
      }, 
     {
        "_id" : "nl-NL",
        "description" : "Dutch (Netherlands)",
        "isActive" : true
     }
     ],
     "screens" : [ 
     {
        "_id" : "caseCodes",
        "dictionary" : [ 
            {
                "key" : "CS_CAT1",
                "parameterizedValue" : "My investigations",
                "locale" : "en-US"
            }, 
            {
                "key" : "MY_INVESTIGATIONS",
                "parameterizedValue" : "",
                "locale" : "pt-BR"
            }, 
       }
      ]
     }

In above structure: I want to update "parameterizedValue" usinng spring-data-mongo-db API 1.3.4, for screen with _id="caseCodes" and key = "CS_CAT1".

I tried (here 'values' is an collection name for TranslationValue array)

      mongoOperations.updateFirst(Query.query(Criteria.where("screens._id")
            .is("caseCodes")), new Update().push(
            "screens.dictionary.$.values", translationValue),
            Translation.class);

but it said, "can't append array to string "dictionary"....

Any pointers or help here? Thanks.

-Sanjeev

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2389

Answers (1)

Neil Lunn
Neil Lunn

Reputation: 151122

There are a few problems with your logic as well as problems with your schema for this type of update.

Firstly what you have are nested arrays, and this causes a problem with updates as described in the documentation for the positional $ operator. What this means is that any condition matching an element of an array on the query side of the update statement will only match the first array index found.

Since you need a specific entry in the inner array you would need to match that as well. But the "catch" says that only the first match will be used in the positional operator so you cannot have both. The query form (if it were possible to work, which it does not) would actually be something like this (native shell):

db.collection.update(
    { 
        "screens._id": "caseCodes",
        "screens.dictionary.key": "CS_CAT1"
    },
    {
        "$set": { 
            "screens.$.dictionary.$.parameterizedValue": "new value"
        }
    }
)

Now that would "appear" to be more correct than what you are doing, but of course this fails because the positional operator cannot be used more than once. I may just quite stupidly work in this case as it just so happens that the first matched index of the "screens" array (which is 0) happens to be exactly the same as the required index of the inner element. But really that is just "dumb luck".

To illustrate better, what you need to do with these type of updates is already know the indexes of the elements and place those values directly into the update statement using "dot notation". So updating your second "dictionary" element would go like this:

db.collection.update(
    { 
        "screens._id": "caseCodes",
        "screens.dictionary.key": "MY_INVESTIGATIONS"
    },
    {
        "$set": { 
            "screens.0.dictionary.1.parameterizedValue": "new value"
        }
    }
)

Also noting that the correct operator to use here is $set as you are not appending to either of the arrays, but rather you wish to change an element.

Since that sort of exactness in updates is unlikely to suit what you need, then you should look at changing the schema to accommodate your operations in a much more supported way. So one possibility is that your "screens" data may not possibly need to be an array, and you could change that to a document form like so:

     "screens" : {
         "caseCodes": [ 
             {
                 "key" : "CS_CAT1",
                 "parameterizedValue" : "My investigations",
                 "locale" : "en-US"
             }, 
             {
                 "key" : "MY_INVESTIGATIONS",
                 "parameterizedValue" : "",
                 "locale" : "pt-BR"
             }, 
         ]
     }

This changed the form to:

db.collection.update(
    { 
        "screens.caseCodes.key": "CS_CAT1"
    },
    {
        "$set": { 
            "screens.caseCodes.$.parameterizedValue": "new value"
        }
    }
)

That may or may not work for your purposes, but you either live with the limitations of using a nested array or otherwise change your schema in some way.

Upvotes: 3

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