Docs Home → Develop Applications → MongoDB Manual

$documents (aggregation)

On this page

Definition

Syntax
Behavior
Examples

Definition

$documents: Changed in version 5.1.
Returns literal documents from input values.

Syntax

The $documents stage has the following form:

{ $documents: <expression> }

Behavior

$documents accepts any valid expression that resolves to an array of objects. This includes:

system variables, such as $$NOW or $$SEARCH_META
$let expressions
variables in scope from $lookup expressions

Expressions that do not resolve to a current document, like $myField or $$ROOT, will result in an error.

Examples

Test a Pipeline Stage

Create testing and debugging data for a pipeline stage without creating test collections.

db.aggregate(
   [
      { $documents: [ { x: 10 }, { x: 2 }, { x: 5 } ] },
      { $bucketAuto: { groupBy: "$x", buckets: 4 } }
   ]
)

The aggregation expression does not specify a collection. It uses the input data in the highlighted $documents stage as input to the $bucketAuto stage.

[
  { _id: { min: 2, max: 5 }, count: 1 },
  { _id: { min: 5, max: 10 }, count: 1 },
  { _id: { min: 10, max: 10 }, count: 1 }
]

Use `$documents` with `$lookup`

Correlate documents in a collection with other data using $documents to modify $lookup output.

Create the locations collection.

db.locations.insertMany(
   [
      { zip: 94301, name: "Palo Alto" },
      { zip: 10019, name: "New York" }
   ]
 )

Use $documents as a data source to transform the documents.

db.locations.aggregate(
   [
      { $match: {} },
      { $lookup:
         {
            localField: "zip",
            foreignField: "zip_id",
            as: "city_state",
            pipeline:
              [
                 { $documents:
                    [
                       { zip_id: 94301, name: "Palo Alto, CA" },
                       { zip_id: 10019, name: "New York, NY" }
                    ]
                 }
              ]
         }
      }
   ]
 )

The output correlates the data in the locations collection with the values in the $documents pipeline stage.

[
   {
      _id: ObjectId("618949d60f7bfd5f5689490d"),
      zip: 94301,
      name: 'Palo Alto',
      city_state: [ { zip_id: 94301, name: 'Palo Alto, CA' } ]
   },
   {
      _id: ObjectId("618949d60f7bfd5f5689490e"),
      zip: 10019,
      name: 'New York',
      city_state: [ { zip_id: 10019, name: 'New York, NY' } ]
   }
]

The zip field corresponds to the zip_id field
The as parameter creates a new output field

For details on subqueries using this $lookup syntax, see Correlated Subqueries Using Concise Syntax.

← $densify (aggregation)$facet (aggregation) →