Mongoose select fields from populated array

Question

I have a JSON structure like this:

// Users Collection

[{
  "id": "1",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "contacts": [
    {
      "user": "2", // reference
      "nickname": "blub"
    },
    {
      "user": "3", // reference
      "nickname": "blub"
    },
  ],
  "otherfield": "anything"
}]

The User object contains an array contacts which basically represents a list of referenced Users. To allow storing additional data (like the nickname) per user I have an array of objects and not an array of ObjectIds.

Now I would like to get the contacts populated with specifying the fields to resolve (id and email for example). So the expected output is something like this:

{
  "id": "1",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "contacts": [
    {
      "user": {
        "id": "2",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        // without other fields 
      },
      "nickname": "blub"
    }
  ],
  "otherfield": "anything"
}

I have tried something like this

User.findById(id)
  .populate('contacts.user')
  .select('contacts.user.email')

But then my contacts array contains only empty objects.

Also if I try this:

User.findById(id).populate({
    path: 'contacts.user',
    select: 'email'
})

The outcome is just the parent user without any population:

{
  email: "[email protected]",
  id: "1"
}

Mikey · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-27 18:04:40Z

3

Try

User.findById(id).populate({
    path: 'contacts.user',
    select: 'email'
})

See Populating multiple paths of the documentation.

answered Aug 27, 2017 at 18:04

Mikey

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K. D. · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-27 18:17:40Z

0

Finally I found what I have overlooked in the documentation (thank you @Mikey)

Story.
  findOne({ title: /casino royale/i }).
  populate('author', 'name'). // only return the Persons name
  exec(function (err, story) {
    if (err) return handleError(err);

    console.log('The author is %s', story.author.name);
    // prints "The author is Ian Fleming"

    console.log('The authors age is %s', story.author.age);
    // prints "The authors age is null'
  })

answered Aug 27, 2017 at 18:17

K. D.

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