Grouping with $group

Part of the Databases with MongoDB section of Coddy's Node.js journey. Lesson 21 of 29.

Counting one genre is one query. Counting every genre at once needs the database to sort the books into groups.

aggregate runs a pipeline: an array of stages, each passing its output to the next. The $group stage makes one output document per distinct value of its _id. Here _id is not a document id. It says what to group by, and each output document holds that value in _id. A $ before a field name, '$team', means "this document's value of that field". Without it, 'team' is the same text for every document, so they all land in one group. $sum: 1 adds 1 per document.

await players
    .aggregate([{ $group: { _id: '$team', players: { $sum: 1 } } }])
    .toArray();
// [{ _id: 'red', players: 4 }, { _id: 'blue', players: 3 }]

A group result contains only that _id and the fields its accumulators compute; other fields from the input documents do not survive.

Challenge

Easy

This step opens the course’s prepared bookshelf API project, rather than your project files from Counting Documents (including server.js). Your earlier work stays in its own lesson. Read the supplied files before editing server.js. This copy contains the bookshelf CRUD routes, unique ISBN index, GET /books filters and GET /stats counts.

A genre page shows how many books each genre has, all from one query, including genres nobody planned for.

In server.js, add a GET /stats/genres route.
Run an aggregation on books with one $group stage. It makes one result per distinct genre, with the number of books that have it.
Respond with status 200 and the array the aggregation returns. Each entry holds the genre in _id and the number of books in count. Inside $group, _id is not an ObjectId: it is the value the books were grouped by. The entries can come in any order. With the starter's books, the response is:
```
[ { "_id": "scifi", "count": 2 }, { "_id": "classic", "count": 1 } ]
```
Try it: Send GET /stats/genres: you get the two entries above. Send POST /books with { "title": "Leaves of Grass", "author": "Walt Whitman", "year": 1855, "isbn": "9780140421996", "genre": "poetry" }: you get 201. Send GET /stats/genres again: a third entry appears, { "_id": "poetry", "count": 1 }.

Try it yourself

import express from 'express';
import { MongoClient, ObjectId } from 'mongodb';

const client = new MongoClient('mongodb://localhost:27017');
const db = client.db('shelf');
const books = db.collection('books');
const ratings = db.collection('ratings');

await books.createIndex({ isbn: 1 }, { unique: true });
await books.insertMany([
    { title: 'Dune', author: 'Frank Herbert', year: 1965, isbn: '9780441013593', genre: 'scifi' },
    { title: 'Kindred', author: 'Octavia E. Butler', year: 1979, isbn: '9780807083697', genre: 'scifi' },
    { title: 'Emma', author: 'Jane Austen', year: 1815, isbn: '9780141439587', genre: 'classic' },
]);

const app = express();
app.use(express.json());

// Every error answers { error: message }.
function sendError(res, status, message) {
    res.status(status).json({ error: message });
}

// The :id as an ObjectId, or null after answering 400 for a bad id.
function parseId(req, res) {
    if (ObjectId.isValid(req.params.id)) {
        return new ObjectId(req.params.id);
    }
    sendError(res, 400, 'Not a valid id');
    return null;
}

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Bookshelf API');
});

app.get('/books', async (req, res) => {
    const filter = {};
    if (req.query.author) {
        filter.author = req.query.author;
    }
    if (req.query.from || req.query.to) {
        filter.year = {};
        if (req.query.from) {
            filter.year.$gte = Number(req.query.from);
        }
        if (req.query.to) {
            filter.year.$lte = Number(req.query.to);
        }
    }
    const list = await books.find(filter).toArray();
    res.json(list);
});

app.post('/books', async (req, res) => {
    const book = req.body;
    try {
        await books.insertOne(book);
    } catch (err) {
        if (err.code === 11000) {
            return sendError(res, 409, 'That ISBN is already on the shelf');
        }
        throw err;
    }
    res.status(201).json(book);
});

app.get('/books/newest', async (req, res) => {
    const n = Number(req.query.n) || 3;
    const list = await books
        .find({}, { projection: { title: 1, year: 1, _id: 0 } })
        .sort({ year: -1 })
        .limit(n)
        .toArray();
    res.json(list);
});

app.get('/books/:id', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const book = await books.findOne({ _id: id });
    if (!book) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.json(book);
});

app.patch('/books/:id', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const result = await books.updateOne({ _id: id }, { $set: req.body });
    if (result.matchedCount === 0) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.json(await books.findOne({ _id: id }));
});

app.post('/books/:id/copies', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const result = await books.updateOne({ _id: id }, { $inc: { copies: 1 } });
    if (result.matchedCount === 0) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.json(await books.findOne({ _id: id }));
});

app.post('/books/:id/tags', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const result = await books.updateOne({ _id: id }, { $push: { tags: req.body.tag } });
    if (result.matchedCount === 0) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.json(await books.findOne({ _id: id }));
});

app.delete('/books/:id', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const result = await books.deleteOne({ _id: id });
    if (result.deletedCount === 0) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.status(204).end();
});

app.put('/books/:id/ratings', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    const { user, stars } = req.body;
    await ratings.updateOne({ bookId: id, user }, { $set: { stars } }, { upsert: true });
    res.json({ user, stars });
});

app.get('/books/:id/ratings', async (req, res) => {
    const id = parseId(req, res);
    if (!id) return;
    res.json(await ratings.find({ bookId: id }).toArray());
});

app.get('/stats', async (req, res) => {
    const filter = req.query.genre ? { genre: req.query.genre } : {};
    res.json({
        books: await books.countDocuments(filter),
        ratings: await ratings.countDocuments(),
    });
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
    console.log('Bookshelf is running on port 3000');
});

Practice on your own: Express playground

Grouping with $group

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