How to combine $in and $elemMatch properly with MongoDB (PyMongo) - mongodb

Question

In my database, I've got data stored according to the following scheme:
{'_id': ...,
'names': [{'first': ...,
'last': ...},
{'first': ...,
'last': ...},
...
],
...
}
Now, in my program, I get a list of names according to the following scheme:
name_list = [(first_name1, last_name1), (first_name2, last_name2), ...]
What I want, is to find all documents where any of these combinations of first/last name found in name_list are contained in the names array.
If I'd have just one name to check (instead of a list), I'd use the following query:
query = {'names':
{'$elemMatch':
{'first_name': first_name,
'last_name': last_name}
}}
So I could supply this query for every name in the list, doing something like:
all_results = []
for first_name, last_name in name_list:
rv := # Result from query
# combine all_results and rv
But I feel like there should be a better way to do this.

Answer 1

A multi-elem match query could be created from name_list using $or and $elemMatch which works in a way to find the documents where any of those first/last combination matches.
Query: considering name_list to be
//[(first_name1, last_name1), (first_name2, last_name2), (first_name3, last_name3)]
db.collection.find({
$or: [
{
names: {
$elemMatch: {
first: "first_name1",
last: "last_name1"
}
}
},
{
names: {
$elemMatch: {
first: "first_name2",
last: "last_name2"
}
}
},
{
names: {
$elemMatch: {
first: "first_name3",
last: "last_name3"
}
}
}
]
});