Projection, Sort and Limit

Part of the Databases with MongoDB section of Coddy's Node.js journey. Lesson 5 of 18.

A "newest books" list needs a few fields from a few books, in order.

A projection picks the fields a query answers: 1 keeps a field, and _id comes along unless you set it to 0. On the cursor, sort({ field: -1 }) orders from high to low (1 is low to high), and limit(n) keeps the first n results.

// the 5 highest scores, name and score only
await players
    .find({}, { projection: { name: 1, score: 1, _id: 0 } })
    .sort({ score: -1 })
    .limit(5)
    .toArray();

The database sorts before it limits, in whatever order you chain the two calls. Sorting the array in JavaScript after limit sorts the wrong five.

Challenge

Easy

GET /books/newest answers the newest books first, each as { "title", "year" } only.
?n= says how many; without it, 3.
Declare it above GET /books/:id, or newest is read as an id.

Send GET /books/newest, then GET /books/newest?n=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');

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 });
}

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;
    await books.insertOne(book);
    res.status(201).json(book);
});

app.get('/books/:id', async (req, res) => {
    if (!ObjectId.isValid(req.params.id)) {
        return sendError(res, 400, 'Not a valid id');
    }
    const book = await books.findOne({ _id: new ObjectId(req.params.id) });
    if (!book) {
        return sendError(res, 404, 'No such book');
    }
    res.json(book);
});

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