Updating multiple complex array elements in MongoDB - mongodb

Question

I know this has been asked before, but I have yet to find a solution that works efficiently. I am working with the MongoDB C# driver, though this is more of a general question about MongoDB operations.
I have a document structure that looks something like this:
field1: value1
field2: value2
...
users: [ {...user 1 subdocument...}, {...user 2 subdocument...}, ... ]
Some facts:
Each user subdocument includes further sub-arrays & subdocuments (so they're fairly complex).
The average users array only contains about 5 elements, but in the worst case can surpass 100.
Several thousand update operations on multiple users may be conducted per day in this system, each on one document at a time. Larger arrays will receive more frequent updates due to their data size.
I am trying to figure out how to do this efficiently. From what I've heard, you cannot directly set several array elements to new values all at once, so I had to try something else.
I tried using the $pullAll / $AddToSet + $each operations to remove the old array and replace it with a modified one. I am aware that $pullall can remove only the elements that I need as well, but I would like to preserve the order of elements.
The C# code:
try
{
WriteConcernResult wcr = collection.Update(query,
Update.Combine(Update.PullAll("users"),
Update.AddToSetEach("users", newUsers.ToArray())));
}
catch (WriteConcernException wce)
{
return wce.Message;
}
In this case newUsers is aList<BsonValue>converted to an array. However I am getting the following exception message:
Cannot update 'users' and 'users' at the same time
By the looks of it, I can't have two update statements in use on the same field in the same write operation.
I also tried Update.Set("users", newUsers.ToArray()), but apparently the Set statement doesn't work with arrays, just basic values:
Argument 2: cannot convert from 'MongoDB.Bson.BsonValue[]' to 'MongoDB.Bson.BsonValue'
So then I tried converting that array to a BsonDocument:
Update.Set("users", newUsers.ToArray().ToBsonDocument());
And got this:
An Array value cannot be written to the root level of a BSON document.
I could try replacing the whole document, but that seems like overkill and definitely not very efficient.
So the only thing I can think of now is to run two separate write operations: one to remove the unwanted old users and another to replace them with their newer versions:
WriteConcernResult wcr = collection.Update(query, Update.PullAll("users"));
WriteConcernResult wcr = collection.Update(query, Update.AddToSetEach("users", newUsers.ToArray()));
Is this my best option? Or is there another, better way of doing this?

Answer 1

Your code should work with a minor change:
Update.Set("users", new BsonArray(newUsers));
BsonArray is a BsonValue, where as an array of documents is not and we don't implicitly convert arrays like we do other primitive values.

Answer 2

this extension method solve my problem:
public static class MongoExtension
{
public static BsonArray ToBsonArray(this IEnumerable list)
{
var array = new BsonArray();
foreach (var item in list)
array.Add((BsonValue) item);
return array;
}
}