Replace the relationship ID with the data object that it references.
I came from NodeJS and it’s Mongoose ORM for Mongo, which had a handy Populate method. Such a method doesn’t exist with the MongoDB Go Driver. I achieved a similar join-like result by using the MongoDB Aggregate method, which pipelines operations.
In this example I demonstrate an Aggregate pipeline that sequences the following:
- Search (using $match)
- Sort (using $sort)
- Skip (using $skip)
- Limit (using ($limit)
- Populate (using $lookup)
This sequence handles search, sort and pagination before populating the relationship field.
Structs
The parent_id field isn’t displayed on the JSON response, instead the populated parent field is displayed.
type Parent struct {
ID primitive.ObjectID `json:"id,omitempty" bson:"_id"`
}type Child struct {
ID primitive.ObjectID `json:"id,omitempty" bson:"_id"`
ParentID primitive.ObjectID `json:"-" bson:"parent_id"`
Parent []Parent `json:"parent" bson:"parent"`
}Function
This function runs on the Child struct, which references the Parent struct by ID. It takes in some query params for search and pagination and returns the data, along with a count of the number of documents matching the given criteria.
func ReadManyChildren(limit int, page int, search string) ([]Parent, int, error) {
var ps []Parent
searchFilter := bson.M{"name": bson.M{"$regex": search, "$options": "im"}}
var aggSearch, aggSort, aggLimit, aggSkip, aggPopulate, aggProject bson.M
// Filter by search term
aggSearch = bson.M{"$match": searchFilter}
// Sort by name in ascending order
aggSort = bson.M{"$sort": bson.M{"name": 1}}
// Pagination
if limit > 0 && page > 0 {
aggSkip = bson.M{"$skip": int64(int(math.Abs(float64(page-1))) * limit)}
aggLimit = bson.M{"$limit": int64(limit)}
}
// Populate Parent field
aggPopulate = bson.M{"$lookup": bson.M{
"from": "Parent", // the collection name
"localField": "parent_id", // the field on the child struct
"foreignField": "_id", // the field on the parent struct
"as": "parent", // the field to populate into
}}
// Take first element from the populated array (there is only one)
aggProject = bson.M{"$project": bson.M{
"parent": bson.M{"$arrayElemAt": []interface{}{"$parent", 0}},
}}
cursor, _ := childCollection.Aggregate(context.TODO(), []bson.M{
aggSearch, aggSort, aggSkip, aggLimit, aggPopulate, aggProject,
})
if err = cursor.All(context.TODO(), &ps); err != nil {
return nil, 0, err
}
count, _ := childCollection.CountDocuments(context.TODO(), searchFilter)
return ps, int(count), nil
}Singular
The above function can be used to replace ‘Find’, but for ‘FindOne’ the unmarshalling of the cursor needs to be a singular, rather than a slice.
var p Parent
...
// Decode the first (and only) document
if cursor.Next(context.TODO()) {
err := cursor.Decode(&p)
if err != nil {
return p, err
}
}