Obtaining $group result with group count - mongodb

Question

Assuming I have a collection called "posts" (in reality it is a more complex collection, posts is too simple) with the following structure:
> db.posts.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("50ad8d451d41c8fc58000003"), "title" : "Lorem ipsum", "author" :
"John Doe", "content" : "This is the content", "tags" : [ "SOME", "RANDOM", "TAGS" ] }
I expect this collection to span hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, that I need to query for posts by tags and group the results by tag and display the results paginated. This is where the aggregation framework comes in. I plan to use the aggregate() method to query the collection:
db.posts.aggregate([
{ "$unwind" : "$tags" },
{ "$group" : {
_id: { tag: "$tags" },
count: { $sum: 1 }
} }
]);
The catch is that to create the paginator I would need to know the length of the output array. I know that to do that you can do:
db.posts.aggregate([
{ "$unwind" : "$tags" },
{ "$group" : {
_id: { tag: "$tags" },
count: { $sum: 1 }
} }
{ "$group" : {
_id: null,
total: { $sum: 1 }
} }
]);
But that would discard the output from previous pipeline (the first group). Is there a way that the two operations be combined while preserving each pipeline's output? I know that the output of the whole aggregate operation can be cast to an array in some language and have the contents counted but there may be a possibility that the pipeline output may exceed the 16Mb limit. Also, performing the same query just to obtain the count seems like a waste.
So is obtaining the document result and count at the same time possible? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Use $project to save tag and count into tmp
Use $push or addToSet to store tmp into your data list.
Code:
db.test.aggregate(
{$unwind: '$tags'},
{$group:{_id: '$tags', count:{$sum:1}}},
{$project:{tmp:{tag:'$_id', count:'$count'}}},
{$group:{_id:null, total:{$sum:1}, data:{$addToSet:'$tmp'}}}
)
Output:
{
"result" : [
{
"_id" : null,
"total" : 5,
"data" : [
{
"tag" : "SOME",
"count" : 1
},
{
"tag" : "RANDOM",
"count" : 2
},
{
"tag" : "TAGS1",
"count" : 1
},
{
"tag" : "TAGS",
"count" : 1
},
{
"tag" : "SOME1",
"count" : 1
}
]
}
],
"ok" : 1
}

Answer 2

I'm not sure you need the aggregation framework for this other than counting all the tags eg:
db.posts.aggregate(
{ "unwind" : "$tags" },
{ "group" : {
_id: { tag: "$tags" },
count: { $sum: 1 }
} }
);
For paginating through per tag you can just use the normal query syntax - like so:
db.posts.find({tags: "RANDOM"}).skip(10).limit(10)