How do I perform the SQL Join equivalent in MongoD

Question

How do I perform the SQL Join equivalent in MongoDB?

For example say you have two collections (users and comments) and I want to pull all the comments with pid=444 along with the user info for each.

comments
  { uid:12345, pid:444, comment="blah" }
  { uid:12345, pid:888, comment="asdf" }
  { uid:99999, pid:444, comment="qwer" }

users
  { uid:12345, name:"john" }
  { uid:99999, name:"mia"  }

Is there a way to pull all the comments with a certain field (eg. ...find({pid:444}) ) and the user information associated with each comment in one go?

At the moment, I am first getting the comments which match my criteria, then figuring out all the uid's in that result set, getting the user objects, and merging them with the comment's results. Seems like I am doing it wrong.

Answer 1

You have to do it the way you described. MongoDB is a non-relational database and doesn't support joins.

Answer 2

We can merge/join all data inside only one collection with a easy function in few lines using the mongodb client console, and now we could be able of perform the desired query. Below a complete example,

.- Authors:

db.authors.insert([
    {
        _id: 'a1',
        name: { first: 'orlando', last: 'becerra' },
        age: 27
    },
    {
        _id: 'a2',
        name: { first: 'mayra', last: 'sanchez' },
        age: 21
    }
]);

.- Categories:

db.categories.insert([
    {
        _id: 'c1',
        name: 'sci-fi'
    },
    {
        _id: 'c2',
        name: 'romance'
    }
]);

.- Books

db.books.insert([
    {
        _id: 'b1',
        name: 'Groovy Book',
        category: 'c1',
        authors: ['a1']
    },
    {
        _id: 'b2',
        name: 'Java Book',
        category: 'c2',
        authors: ['a1','a2']
    },
]);

.- Book lending

db.lendings.insert([
    {
        _id: 'l1',
        book: 'b1',
        date: new Date('01/01/11'),
        lendingBy: 'jose'
    },
    {
        _id: 'l2',
        book: 'b1',
        date: new Date('02/02/12'),
        lendingBy: 'maria'
    }
]);

.- The magic:

db.books.find().forEach(
    function (newBook) {
        newBook.category = db.categories.findOne( { "_id": newBook.category } );
        newBook.lendings = db.lendings.find( { "book": newBook._id  } ).toArray();
        newBook.authors = db.authors.find( { "_id": { $in: newBook.authors }  } ).toArray();
        db.booksReloaded.insert(newBook);
    }
);

.- Get the new collection data:

db.booksReloaded.find().pretty()

.- Response :)

{
    "_id" : "b1",
    "name" : "Groovy Book",
    "category" : {
        "_id" : "c1",
        "name" : "sci-fi"
    },
    "authors" : [
        {
            "_id" : "a1",
            "name" : {
                "first" : "orlando",
                "last" : "becerra"
            },
            "age" : 27
        }
    ],
    "lendings" : [
        {
            "_id" : "l1",
            "book" : "b1",
            "date" : ISODate("2011-01-01T00:00:00Z"),
            "lendingBy" : "jose"
        },
        {
            "_id" : "l2",
            "book" : "b1",
            "date" : ISODate("2012-02-02T00:00:00Z"),
            "lendingBy" : "maria"
        }
    ]
}
{
    "_id" : "b2",
    "name" : "Java Book",
    "category" : {
        "_id" : "c2",
        "name" : "romance"
    },
    "authors" : [
        {
            "_id" : "a1",
            "name" : {
                "first" : "orlando",
                "last" : "becerra"
            },
            "age" : 27
        },
        {
            "_id" : "a2",
            "name" : {
                "first" : "mayra",
                "last" : "sanchez"
            },
            "age" : 21
        }
    ],
    "lendings" : [ ]
}

I hope this lines can help you.

Answer 3

As others have pointed out you are trying to create a relational database from none relational database which you really don't want to do but anyways, if you have a case that you have to do this here is a solution you can use. We first do a foreach find on collection A( or in your case users) and then we get each item as an object then we use object property (in your case uid) to lookup in our second collection (in your case comments) if we can find it then we have a match and we can print or do something with it. Hope this helps you and good luck :)

db.users.find().forEach(
function (object) {
    var commonInBoth=db.comments.findOne({ "uid": object.uid} );
    if (commonInBoth != null) {
        printjson(commonInBoth) ;
        printjson(object) ;
    }else {
        // did not match so we don't care in this case
    }
});

Answer 4

We can merge two collection by using mongoDB sub query. Here is example, Commentss--

`db.commentss.insert([
  { uid:12345, pid:444, comment:"blah" },
  { uid:12345, pid:888, comment:"asdf" },
  { uid:99999, pid:444, comment:"qwer" }])`

Userss--

db.userss.insert([
  { uid:12345, name:"john" },
  { uid:99999, name:"mia"  }])

MongoDB sub query for JOIN--

`db.commentss.find().forEach(
    function (newComments) {
        newComments.userss = db.userss.find( { "uid": newComments.uid } ).toArray();
        db.newCommentUsers.insert(newComments);
    }
);`

Get result from newly generated Collection--

db.newCommentUsers.find().pretty()

Result--

`{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5511236e29709afa03f226ef"),
    "uid" : 12345,
    "pid" : 444,
    "comment" : "blah",
    "userss" : [
        {
            "_id" : ObjectId("5511238129709afa03f226f2"),
            "uid" : 12345,
            "name" : "john"
        }
    ]
}
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5511236e29709afa03f226f0"),
    "uid" : 12345,
    "pid" : 888,
    "comment" : "asdf",
    "userss" : [
        {
            "_id" : ObjectId("5511238129709afa03f226f2"),
            "uid" : 12345,
            "name" : "john"
        }
    ]
}
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5511236e29709afa03f226f1"),
    "uid" : 99999,
    "pid" : 444,
    "comment" : "qwer",
    "userss" : [
        {
            "_id" : ObjectId("5511238129709afa03f226f3"),
            "uid" : 99999,
            "name" : "mia"
        }
    ]
}`

Hope so this will help.

Answer 5

This page on the official mongodb site addresses exactly this question:

http://docs.mongodb.org/ecosystem/tutorial/model-data-for-ruby-on-rails/

When we display our list of stories, we'll need to show the name of the user who posted the story. If we were using a relational database, we could perform a join on users and stores, and get all our objects in a single query. But MongoDB does not support joins and so, at times, requires bit of denormalization. Here, this means caching the 'username' attribute.

Relational purists may be feeling uneasy already, as if we were violating some universal law. But let’s bear in mind that MongoDB collections are not equivalent to relational tables; each serves a unique design objective. A normalized table provides an atomic, isolated chunk of data. A document, however, more closely represents an object as a whole. In the case of a social news site, it can be argued that a username is intrinsic to the story being posted.

Answer 6

You can run SQL queries including join on MongoDB with mongo_fdw from Postgres.