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 Comments are embedded into Items, 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.