Ensure a unique index on nested reference on a mongoose schema - mongodb

Question

What I want is that a user can like a post only once, hence I uniquely indexed the user in the likes array to ensure the same, but it isn't working and I can't find out what is wrong here .
The schema looks like this :
const mongoose = require('mongoose')
const postSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
author: {
type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
ref: 'User' // User model
},
text: {
type: String,
required: [true, 'Post must have some text']
},
likes: [
{
user: {
type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
ref: 'User'
}
}
],
comments: [
{
author: {
type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
ref: 'User'
},
text: {
type: String,
required: [true, 'Comment must have some text']
},
addedAt: {
type: Date,
default: Date.now
}
}
],
createdAt: {
type: Date,
default: Date.now
}
})
postSchema.pre(/^find/, function(next) {
this.populate({
path: 'author',
select: 'name avatar'
}).populate({
path: 'comments.author',
select: 'name avatar'
})
next()
})
// Ensure a user can like a post only once
postSchema.index({ 'likes.user': 1 }, { unique: true })
const Post = mongoose.model('Post', postSchema)
module.exports = Post
However when I send a post request to like a post twice via the same user it
shows no error.
Here is the postman output
I have tried both the ways listed in this, but none of them worked in this case.
Mongoose Index on a field in nested document
How do I ensure a user can like a post only once from the schema itself ?

Answer 1

Try saving likes in this format in the database
likes:[{type:mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,ref: 'User'}]
making it
likes:[ObjectId("5af03111967c60501d97781f")]
and when the post like API is hit do
{$addToSet: {likedBy: userId}}
in update query,addToSet ensures no duplicate ids are maintained in the array.