$merge with whenMatched but no "on"

[John_Lynn]

There’s an example in the docs under “Use Variables Defined in the Merge Stage” where $merge is shown with a whenMatched, but there was no “on” specified.

What’s the behavior when there is no “on” (which is indeed optional) – does the whenMatched action (in this case a pipeline) just always get executed?

Thanks

[NeNaD (Nenad Milosavljevic)]

Hi,

In the same documentation, you can see that on has a default value that depends on the output collection.

The default value for on depends on the output collection:

• If the output collection does not exist, the on identifier must be and defaults to the _id field. The corresponding unique _id index is automatically created.
• If the existing output collection is unsharded, the on identifier defaults to the _id field.
• If the existing output collection is a sharded collection, the on identifier defaults to all the shard key fields and the _id field. If specifying a different on identifier, the on must contain all the shard key fields.

[John_Lynn]

Thanks - missed that!