Naming Objects in Mongo Array? - php

Question

Using PHP and Mongo I would like to update the users availability but cannot figure it out. How can I structure my collection to be able to reference availability groups.steve.availability?
Below is the structure of my "groups" collection:
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "524327d536b82c7c5c842f6d"
},
"group_id": "testing",
"password": "test",
"users": [
{
"username": "steve",
"availability": "null"
},
{
"username": "joeb",
"availability": "null"
}
]
}

Answer 1

If you want to reference it the way you've suggested: groups.steve.availability, you'd need to structure your documents more like below. (I'm not sure where groups is coming from).
This example would give you users.steve.availability by moving the user's name to a sub-field of the users field (users.steve).
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "524327d536b82c7c5c842f6d"
},
"group_id": "testing",
"password": "test",
"users": {
"steve": {
"availability": "null"
},
"joeb" : {
"availability": "null"
}
}
}
Or, you could just create fields directly on the document:
{
"_id": {
"$oid": "524327d536b82c7c5c842f6d"
},
"group_id": "testing",
"password": "test",
"steve": {
"availability": "null"
},
"joeb" : {
"availability": "null"
}
}
That would allow you to just use steve.availability.
If you're trying to do a query though, you'd be better off leaving it more like you had it originally:
"users": [
{
"username": "steve",
"availability": "null"
}]
So, you could write queries that were like:
db.groups.find({"users.username" : "steve" })