CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mongodbmongoosenosql
obelus
obelus

Reputation: 115

MongoDB schema and structure

I just started learning mongoDB and mongoose here.

Is it possible to have value as key in mongoDB? For example, I'd like to have a structure like this:

Person collection:

USA: {
  'John Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
  'Jane Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
},
Australia: {
  'John Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
  'Jane Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
},
England: {
  'John Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
  'Jane Doe': { phone: '...', somethingElse: '...' },
}

I know it's a terrible example, and I understand alternatively we can store the documents like:

{_id: 1, name: 'John Doe', address: 'USA', phone: '...', ...},
{_id: 2, name: 'John Doe', address: 'Australia', phone: '...', ...},
{_id: 3, name: 'John Doe', address: 'England', phone: '...', ...},

I guess I'm just trying to understand if storing value as key is even possible here. And if it is, how do we define the schema with mongoose?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 52

Answers (1)

mickl
mickl

Reputation: 49945

Theoretically you could use a schema like:

const testSchema = new Schema({
    countries: {
        type: Map,
        of: {
            type: Map,
            of: Object,
        },
    },
});

taking advantage of Map type in mongoose, then you can assign your dynamic object to contries property.

Personally I believe that second approach you mentioned is a way better idea (unless you really have a good reason for using the first one).

First reason is that having dynamic key names makes querying difficult. Instead of simple .find({name: 'John Doe'}) you need to run complicated aggregation queries like here. Basically any traversing like counting people, filtering by phone etc will be painful with dynamic keys.

Second reason is that MongoDB document has 16MB limitation so gathering too many people means you can approach that limit.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions