I did some research on this issue and came up with following results. First, MongoDB docs suggest:
In general, use embedded data models when:
- you have “contains” relationships between entities.
- you have one-to-many relationships where the “many” objects always appear with or are viewed in the context of their parent documents.
So in my situation, it makes much more sense if Comment
s are embedded into Item
s, instead of having independent existence.
Nevertheless, I was curious to know the solution without changing my data model. As mentioned in MongoDB docs:
Referencing provides more flexibility than embedding; however, to
resolve the references, client-side applications must issue follow-up
queries. In other words, using references requires more roundtrips to
the server.
As multiple roundtrips are kosher now, I came up with following solution:
var showList = function(req, res){
// first DB roundtrip: fetch all items
return Item.find()
.exec(function(err, items) {
// second DB roundtrip: fetch comment counts grouped by item ids
Comment.aggregate({
$group: {
_id: '$item',
count: {
$sum: 1
}
}
}, function(err, agg){
// iterate over comment count groups (yes, that little dash is underscore.js)
_.each(agg, function( itr ){
// for each aggregated group, search for corresponding item and put commentCount in it
var item = _.find(items, function( item ){
return item._id.toString() == itr._id.toString();
});
if ( item ) {
item.set('commentCount', itr.count);
}
});
// send items to the client in JSON format
return res.send(items);
})
});
};
Agree? Disagree? Please enlighten me with your comments!
If you have a better answer, please post here, I'll accept it if I find it worthy.