Merge changeset documents in a query - mongodb

Question

I have recorded changes from an information system in a mongo database. Every time a set of values are set or changed, a record is saved in the mongo database.
The change collection is in the following form:
{ "user_id": 1, "timestamp": { "date" : "2010-09-22 09:28:02", "timezone_type" : 3, "timezone" : "Europe/Paris" } }, "changes: { "fieldA": "valueA", "fieldB": "valueB", "fieldC": "valueC" } }
{ "user_id": 1, "timestamp": { "date" : "2010-09-24 19:01:52", "timezone_type" : 3, "timezone" : "Europe/Paris" } }, "changes: { "fieldA": "new_valueA", "fieldB": null, "fieldD": "valueD" } }
{ "user_id": 1, "timestamp": { "date" : "2010-10-01 11:11:02", "timezone_type" : 3, "timezone" : "Europe/Paris" } }, "changes: { "fieldD": "new_valueD" } }
Of course there are thousands of records per user with different attributes which represent millions of records. What I want to do is to see a user status at a given time. By example, the user_id 1 at 2010-09-30 would be
fieldA: new_valueA
fieldC: valueC
fieldD: valueD
This means I need to flatten all the changes prior to a given date for a given user into a single record. Can I do that directly in mongo ?
Edit: I am using the 2.0 version of mongodb hence cannot benefit from the aggregation framework.
Edit: It sounds I have found the answer to my question.
var mapTimeAndChangesByUserId = function() {
var key = this.user_id;
var value = { timestamp: this.timestamp.date, changes: this.changes };
emit(key, value);
}
var reduceMergeChanges = function(user_id, changeset) {
var mergeFunction = function(a, b) { for (var attr in b) a[attr] = b[attr]; };
var result = {};
changeset.forEach(function(e) { mergeFunction(result, e.changes); });
return { timestamp: changeset.pop().timestamp, changes: result };
}
The reduce function merges the changes in the order they come and returns the result.
db.user_change.mapReduce(
mapTimeAndChangesByUserId,
reduceMergeChanges,
{
out: { inline: 1 },
query: { user_id: 1, "timestamp.date": { $lt: "2010-09-30" } },
sort: { "timestamp.date": 1 }
});
'results' : [
"_id": 1,
"value": {
"timestamp": "2010-09-24 19:01:52",
"changes": {
"fieldA": "new_valueA",
"fieldB": null,
"fieldC": "valueC",
"fieldD": "valueD"
}
}
]
Which is fine to me.

Answer 1

You could write a MR to do this.
Since the fields are a lot like tags you can modify a nice cookbook example of counting tags here: http://cookbook.mongodb.org/patterns/count_tags/ of course instead of counting you want the latest value applied (assumption since this is not clear in your question) for that field.
So lets get our map function:
map = function() {
if (!this.changes) {
// If there were not changes for some reason lets bail this record
return;
}
// We iterate the changes
for (index in this.changes) {
emit(index /* We emit the field name */, this.changes[index] /* We emit the field value */);
}
}
And now for our reduce:
reduce = function(values){
// This part is dependant upon your input query. If you add a sort of
// date (ts) DESC then you will prolly want the first index (0) not the last as
// gathered here by values.length
return values[values.length];
}
And this will output a single document per field change of the type:
{
_id: your_field_ie_fieldA,
value: whoop
}
You can then iterate the end of the (most likely) in line output and, bam, you have your changes.
This is of course one way of dong it and is not designed to be run completely in line to your app, however that all depends on the size of the data your working on; it could be run very close.
I am unsure whether the group and distinct can run on this but it looks like it might: http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/method/db.collection.group/#db-collection-group however I should note that group is basically a MR wrapper but you could do something like (untested just like the MR above):
db.col.group( {
key: { 'changes.fieldA': 1, // the rest of the fields },
cond: { 'timestamp.date': { $gt: new Date( '01/01/2012' ) } },
reduce: function ( curr, result ) { },
initial: { }
} )
But it does require you to define the keys instead of just iterating them programmably (maybe a better way).