What is $$ROOT in MongoDB aggregate and how it works? - mongodb

Question

I am watching a tutorial I can understand how this aggregate works, What is the use of pings, $$ROOT in it.
client = pymongo.MongoClient(MY_URL)
pings = client['mflix']['watching_pings']
cursor = pings.aggregate([
{
"$sample": { "size": 50000 }
},
{
"$addFields": {
"dayOfWeek": { "$dayOfWeek": "$ts" },
"hourOfDay": { "$hour": "$ts" }
}
},
{
"$group": { "_id": "$dayOfWeek", "pings": { "$push": "$$ROOT" } }
},
{
"$sort": { "_id": 1 }
}
]);

Answer 1

Let's assume that our collection looks like below:
{
"_id" : ObjectId("b9"),
"key" : 1,
"value" : 20,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-16T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("ba"),
"key" : 1,
"value" : 10,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-13T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bb"),
"key" : 3,
"value" : 50,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-12T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bc"),
"key" : 2,
"value" : 0,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-13T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bd"),
"key" : 2,
"value" : 10,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-16T00:00:00Z")
}
Now based on the history field you want to group and insert the whole documents in to an array field 'items'. Here $$ROOT variable will be helpful.
So, the aggregation query to achieve the above will be:
db.collection.aggregate([{
$group: {
_id: '$history',
items: {$push: '$$ROOT'}
}
}])
It will result in following output:
{
"_id" : ISODate("2020-05-12T00:00:00Z"),
"items" : [
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bb"),
"key" : 3,
"value" : 50,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-12T00:00:00Z")
}
]
},
{
"_id" : ISODate("2020-05-13T00:00:00Z"),
"items" : [
{
"_id" : ObjectId("ba"),
"key" : 1,
"value" : 10,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-13T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bc"),
"key" : 2,
"value" : 0,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-13T00:00:00Z")
}
]
},
{
"_id" : ISODate("2020-05-16T00:00:00Z"),
"items" : [
{
"_id" : ObjectId("b9"),
"key" : 1,
"value" : 20,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-16T00:00:00Z")
},
{
"_id" : ObjectId("bd"),
"key" : 2,
"value" : 10,
"history" : ISODate("2020-05-16T00:00:00Z")
}
]
}
I hope it helps.