How to query a relative element using MongoDB - mongodb

Question

I have a document like this:
{
"whoKnows" : {
"name" : "Jeff",
"phone" : "123-123-1234"
},
"anotherElement" : {
"name" : "Jeff",
"phone" : "321-321-3211"
}
}
How can any instance of "name" by queried? For example, using a wildcard may look something like,
db.collection.find( { "*.name" : "Jeff" } )
Or if regex was support in the element place, it might look like,
db.collection.find( { /.*\.name/ : "Jeff" } )
Is it possible to accomplish this using MongoDB?
Side note: I'm not looking for a solution like,
db.collection.find({
"$or": [
{ "whoKnows.name" : "Jeff" },
{ "anotherElement.name" : "Jeff" }
]
})
I need a truly relative path solution as I do not know what the parent element will be (unless there is a way to generate the name of every element - then I could dynamically generate the $or clause at runtime).

Answer 1

Everything about this is fairly horrible, you cannot possibly index on something like the "name" values and your "path" to each attribute is going to vary everywhere. So this is really bad for queries.
I notice you mention "nested" structures, and you still could accommodate this with a similar proposal and some additional tagging, but I want you to consider this "phone book" type example:
{
"phones": [
{
"type": "Home",
"name" : "Jeff",
"phone" : "123-123-1234"
},
{
"type": "Work",
"name" : "Jeff",
"phone" : "123-123-1234"
},
]
}
Since this is actually sub-documents within an array, fields like "name" always share the same path, so not only can you index these (which is going to be good for performance) but the query is very basic:
db.collection({ "phones.name": "Jeff" })
That does exactly what you need by finding "Jeff" in any "name" entry. If you need a hierachy, then add some fields in those sub-documents to indicate the parent/child relationship that you can use in post processing. Or even as a materialized path which could aid your queries.
It really is the better approach.
If you really must keep this kind of structure then at least do something like this with the JavaScript that will bail out on the first match at depth:
db.collection.find(
function () {
var found = false;
var finder = function( obj, field, value ) {
if ( obj.hasOwnProperty(field) && obj[field] == value )
found = true;
if (found) return true;
for( var n in obj ) {
if ( Object.prototype.toString.call(obj[n]) === "[object Object]" ) {
finder( obj[n], field, value );
if (found) return true;
}
}
};
finder( this, "name", "Jeff" );
return found;
}
)
The format there is shorthand notation for the $where operator, which is pretty bad news for performance, but your structure isn't offering much other choice. At any rate, the function should recurse into each nested document until the "field" with the "value" is found.
For anything of production scale, really look at changing the structure to something that can be indexed and accessed quickly. The first example should give you a starting point. Relying on arbitrary JavaScript for queries as your present structure constrains you to is bad news.

Answer 2

If these are similar instance, what stops you in putting these in an array? That would be easier to query.
In it's current form this looks as good as writing your own $where condition to parse all document structure and is not an efficient operation!
Although highly inefficient and I wouldn't suggest using this in a production environment, following is one of the simplest way (with its own various catches) you can query:
db.query.find({$where: function() { x = tojsononeline(this); return x.indexOf('"name" : "Jeff",') >= 0; } })
Please note that this will cause a tablescan and if you have a pre-condition you may want to specify that before the where clause in the query.