Updating Documents

Part of the Databases with MongoDB section of Coddy's Node.js journey. Lesson 6 of 18.

Correcting a book's year should change that one field and leave the others alone.

updateOne(filter, update) changes the first document the filter matches. The update is made of operators: $set writes the fields you give it and keeps every other field. A plain object with no operator is refused with "Update document requires atomic operators".

const result = await players.updateOne(
    { name: 'Ada' },
    { $set: { score: 120, level: 4 } }
);
result.matchedCount;  // 1 if a player matched, 0 if none
result.modifiedCount; // 0 when the values were already the same

Tell a missing document from an unchanged one with matchedCount, not modifiedCount. The update does not answer the document, so read it again with findOne.

Challenge

Easy

PATCH /books/:id changes only the fields in the body and answers 200 with the updated book.
An unknown id answers 404. The starter's parseId already answers 400 for a bad id.

Send PATCH /books/<id> with { "year": 1966 } and watch the book in the Data tab.

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 });
}

// 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;
    await books.insertOne(book);
    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);
});

// Add PATCH /books/:id here.

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