Push items into mongo array via mongoose

Question

Basically I have a mongodb collection called 'people' whose schema is as follows:

people: {
         name: String, 
         friends: [{firstName: String, lastName: String}]
        }

Now, I have a very basic express application that connects to the database and successfully creates 'people' with an empty friends array.

In a secondary place in the application, a form is in place to add friends. The form takes in firstName and lastName and then POSTs with the name field also for reference to the proper people object.

What I'm having a hard time doing is creating a new friend object and then "pushing" it into the friends array.

I know that when I do this via the mongo console I use the update function with $push as my second argument after the lookup criteria, but I can't seem to find the appropriate way to get mongoose to do this.

db.people.update({name: "John"}, {$push: {friends: {firstName: "Harry", lastName: "Potter"}}});

Answer 1

Assuming, var friend = { firstName: 'Harry', lastName: 'Potter' };

There are two options you have:

Update the model in-memory, and save (plain javascript array.push):

person.friends.push(friend);
person.save(done);

or

PersonModel.update(
    { _id: person._id }, 
    { $push: { friends: friend } },
    done
);

I always try and go for the first option when possible, because it'll respect more of the benefits that mongoose gives you (hooks, validation, etc.).

However, if you are doing lots of concurrent writes, you will hit race conditions where you'll end up with nasty version errors to stop you from replacing the entire model each time and losing the previous friend you added. So only go to the former when it's absolutely necessary.

Answer 2

The $push operator appends a specified value to an array.

{ $push: { <field1>: <value1>, ... } }

$push adds the array field with the value as its element.

Above answer fulfils all the requirements, but I got it working by doing the following

var objFriends = { fname:"fname",lname:"lname",surname:"surname" };
Friend.findOneAndUpdate(
   { _id: req.body.id }, 
   { $push: { friends: objFriends  } },
  function (error, success) {
        if (error) {
            console.log(error);
        } else {
            console.log(success);
        }
    });
)

Answer 3

Use $push to update document and insert new value inside an array.

find:

db.getCollection('noti').find({})

result for find:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5bc061f05a4c0511a9252e88"),
    "count" : 1.0,
    "color" : "green",
    "icon" : "circle",
    "graph" : [ 
        {
            "date" : ISODate("2018-10-24T08:55:13.331Z"),
            "count" : 2.0
        }
    ],
    "name" : "online visitor",
    "read" : false,
    "date" : ISODate("2018-10-12T08:57:20.853Z"),
    "__v" : 0.0
}

update:

db.getCollection('noti').findOneAndUpdate(
   { _id: ObjectId("5bc061f05a4c0511a9252e88") }, 
   { $push: { 
             graph: {
               "date" : ISODate("2018-10-24T08:55:13.331Z"),
               "count" : 3.0
               }  
           } 
   })

result for update:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5bc061f05a4c0511a9252e88"),
    "count" : 1.0,
    "color" : "green",
    "icon" : "circle",
    "graph" : [ 
        {
            "date" : ISODate("2018-10-24T08:55:13.331Z"),
            "count" : 2.0
        }, 
        {
            "date" : ISODate("2018-10-24T08:55:13.331Z"),
            "count" : 3.0
        }
    ],
    "name" : "online visitor",
    "read" : false,
    "date" : ISODate("2018-10-12T08:57:20.853Z"),
    "__v" : 0.0
}

Answer 4

Another way to push items into array using Mongoose is- $addToSet, if you want only unique items to be pushed into array. $push operator simply adds the object to array whether or not the object is already present, while $addToSet does that only if the object is not present in the array so as not to incorporate duplicacy.

PersonModel.update(
  { _id: person._id }, 
  { $addToSet: { friends: friend } }
);

This will look for the object you are adding to array. If found, does nothing. If not, adds it to the array.

References:

• $addToSet
• MongooseArray.prototype.addToSet()

Answer 5

First I tried this code

const peopleSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
  name: String,
  friends: [
    {
      firstName: String,
      lastName: String,
    },
  ],
});
const People = mongoose.model("person", peopleSchema);
const first = new Note({
  name: "Yash Salvi",
  notes: [
    {
      firstName: "Johnny",
      lastName: "Johnson",
    },
  ],
});
first.save();
const friendNew = {
  firstName: "Alice",
  lastName: "Parker",
};
People.findOneAndUpdate(
  { name: "Yash Salvi" },
  { $push: { friends: friendNew } },
  function (error, success) {
    if (error) {
      console.log(error);
    } else {
      console.log(success);
    }
  }
);

But I noticed that only first friend (i.e. Johhny Johnson) gets saved and the objective to push array element in existing array of "friends" doesn't seem to work as when I run the code , in database in only shows "First friend" and "friends" array has only one element ! So the simple solution is written below

const peopleSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
  name: String,
  friends: [
    {
      firstName: String,
      lastName: String,
    },
  ],
});
const People = mongoose.model("person", peopleSchema);
const first = new Note({
  name: "Yash Salvi",
  notes: [
    {
      firstName: "Johnny",
      lastName: "Johnson",
    },
  ],
});
first.save();
const friendNew = {
  firstName: "Alice",
  lastName: "Parker",
};
People.findOneAndUpdate(
  { name: "Yash Salvi" },
  { $push: { friends: friendNew } },
  { upsert: true }
);

Adding "{ upsert: true }" solved problem in my case and once code is saved and I run it , I see that "friends" array now has 2 elements ! The upsert = true option creates the object if it doesn't exist. default is set to false.

if it doesn't work use below snippet

People.findOneAndUpdate(
  { name: "Yash Salvi" },
  { $push: { friends: friendNew } },
).exec();

Answer 6

An easy way to do that is to use the following:

var John = people.findOne({name: "John"});
John.friends.push({firstName: "Harry", lastName: "Potter"});
John.save();

Answer 7

In my case, I did this

  const eventId = event.id;
  User.findByIdAndUpdate(id, { $push: { createdEvents: eventId } }).exec();

Answer 8

This is how you could push an item - official docs

const schema = Schema({ nums: [Number] });
const Model = mongoose.model('Test', schema);

const doc = await Model.create({ nums: [3, 4] });
doc.nums.push(5); // Add 5 to the end of the array
await doc.save();

// You can also pass an object with `$each` as the
// first parameter to use MongoDB's `$position`
doc.nums.push({
  $each: [1, 2],
  $position: 0
});
doc.nums;

Answer 9

The $push operator appends a specified value to an array.

The $push operator has the form:

{ $push: { <field1>: <value1>, ... } }

Example

People.update(
   { _id: 1 },
   { $push: { scores: 89 } }
)

Answer 10

I ran into this issue as well. My fix was to create a child schema. See below for an example for your models.

---- Person model

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const SingleFriend = require('./SingleFriend');
const Schema   = mongoose.Schema;

const productSchema = new Schema({
  friends    : [SingleFriend.schema]
});

module.exports = mongoose.model('Person', personSchema);

***Important: SingleFriend.schema -> make sure to use lowercase for schema

--- Child schema

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const Schema   = mongoose.Schema;

const SingleFriendSchema = new Schema({
  Name: String
});

module.exports = mongoose.model('SingleFriend', SingleFriendSchema);