Use a View to Join Two Collections

Use $lookup to create a view over two collections. Applications can query the view without constructing or maintaining complex pipelines.

Example

Create two sample collections, inventory and orders:

db.inventory.insertMany( [
   { prodId: 100, price: 20, quantity: 125 },
   { prodId: 101, price: 10, quantity: 234 },
   { prodId: 102, price: 15, quantity: 432 },
   { prodId: 103, price: 17, quantity: 320 }
] )
db.orders.insertMany( [
   { orderId: 201, custid: 301, prodId: 100, numPurchased: 20 },
   { orderId: 202, custid: 302, prodId: 101, numPurchased: 10 },
   { orderId: 203, custid: 303, prodId: 102, numPurchased: 5 },
   { orderId: 204, custid: 303, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 15 },
   { orderId: 205, custid: 303, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 20 },
   { orderId: 206, custid: 302, prodId: 102, numPurchased: 1 },
   { orderId: 207, custid: 302, prodId: 101, numPurchased: 5 },
   { orderId: 208, custid: 301, prodId: 100, numPurchased: 10 },
   { orderId: 209, custid: 303, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 30 }
] )

Create a Joined View

db.createView( "sales", "orders", [
   {
      $lookup:
         {
            from: "inventory",
            localField: "prodId",
            foreignField: "prodId",
            as: "inventoryDocs"
         }
   },
   {
      $project:
         {
           _id: 0,
           prodId: 1,
           orderId: 1,
           numPurchased: 1,
           price: "$inventoryDocs.price"
         }
   },
      { $unwind: "$price" }
] )

In the example:

The $lookup stage uses the prodId field in the orders collection to "join" documents in the inventory collection that have matching prodId fields.
The matching documents are added as an array in the inventoryDocs field.
The $project stage selects a subset of the available fields.
The $unwind stage converts the price field from an array to a scalar value.

The documents in the sales view are:

{ orderId: 201, prodId: 100, numPurchased: 20, price: 20 },
{ orderId: 202, prodId: 101, numPurchased: 10, price: 10 },
{ orderId: 203, prodId: 102, numPurchased: 5, price: 15 },
{ orderId: 204, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 15, price: 17 },
{ orderId: 205, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 20, price: 17 },
{ orderId: 206, prodId: 102, numPurchased: 1, price: 15 },
{ orderId: 207, prodId: 101, numPurchased: 5, price: 10 },
{ orderId: 208, prodId: 100, numPurchased: 10, price: 20 },
{ orderId: 209, prodId: 103, numPurchased: 30, price: 17 }

Query the View

Query the view for total sales by product:

db.sales.aggregate( [
   {
      $group:
         {
            _id: "$prodId",
            amountSold: { $sum: { $multiply: [ "$price", "$numPurchased" ] } }
         }
   }
] )

[
  { _id: 102, amountSold: 90 },
  { _id: 101, amountSold: 150 },
  { _id: 103, amountSold: 1105 },
  { _id: 100, amountSold: 600 }
]

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Create & Query

Use Default Collation