Simple $Match (Aggregate) on Array Elements (Without $unwind)?

Working with Data
1

Hello again!

I think I must be missing something really simple but no matter how much I search the forums or ‘the internet’ I cannot find a way to $match documents that have a value of interest in an array. Take this simple data set for example (pastes straight into the ‘playground’):

[
  {
    "skills": [
      "45",
      "50"
    ],
    "vectorname": "hereisthename",
    "vectornumber": "50"
  },
  {
    "skills": [
      "1"
    ],
    "vectorname": "killarney",
    "vectornumber": "6"
  },
  {
    "skills": null,
    "vectorname": "weds-dup1",
    "vectornumber": "35"
  },
  {
    "skills": null,
    "vectorname": "Dupo_Sun1",
    "vectornumber": "29"
  }
]

All I want to do is return the documents or objects which contain a specific value in the ‘skills’ array. Let’s just use “50” as the example:

db.collection.aggregate([
  {
    "$match": {
      skills: {
        $eq: "50"
      }
    }
  }
])

BOOM! This works fine, matches the document with a skill in the array of value “50” so why does this fail?!?!?

db.collection.aggregate([
  {
    "$match": {
      skills: {
        $eq: "$vectornumber"
      }
    }
  }
])

The dataset is manufactured as it is actually the result part way through a $lookup/pipeline where the number of interest is passed is as a $let statement. However, to make it simple I changed one of the documents to contain another field value that forces a match. Nothing works, there appears no way to specify a field instead of hard coding the “50”, and I have tried other more elaborate examples having surfed, such as this:

db.collection.aggregate([
  {
    "$match": {
      "skills": {
        $elemMatch: {
          "$in": [
            "$vectornumber",
            "$skills"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
])

Same result, no matches, the “$vectornumber” does not appear to resolve to “50” which we can see and prove does work. What am I missing because I cannot beleive I have to ‘unwind’ and rebuild the whole thing to match a simple array element… surely not?!

Please help put an old man out of his misery, what is wrong with the query when using the field name and how do I resolve this so I can search arrays against a value/field passed in using $let or similar?

Thanks a lot,
Martin.

2

Tinkering away I think I have found the solution, or a solution without ‘unwinding’:

db.collection.aggregate([
  {
    "$match": {
      $expr: {
        "$in": [
          "$vectornumber",
          {
            "$ifNull": [
              "$skills",
              []
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
])

I clearly need to try to understand the difference in standard queries (find) and aggregate queries, if anyone can provide an explanation or direct me to decent on-line reference material it would be appreciated! Cheers.