$unionWith (aggregation)

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Definition

Syntax
Considerations
Duplicate Results
$unionWith a Sharded Collection
Collation
Atlas Search Support
Restrictions
Examples
Create Sales Reports from the Union of Yearly Data Collections
Report 1: All Sales by Year and Stores and Items
Report 2: Aggregated Sales by Items

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Definition

$unionWith

Performs a union of two collections. $unionWith combines pipeline results from two collections into a single result set. The stage outputs the combined result set (including duplicates) to the next stage.

The order in which the combined result set documents are output is unspecified.

Syntax

The $unionWith stage has the following syntax:

{ $unionWith: { coll: "<collection>", pipeline: [ <stage1>, ... ] } }

To include all documents from the specified collection without any processing, you can use the simplified form:

{ $unionWith: "<collection>" }  // Include all documents from the specified collection

The $unionWith stage takes a document with the following fields:

Field	Description
coll	The collection or view whose pipeline results you wish to include in the result set.
pipeline	Optional. An aggregation pipeline to apply to the specified coll. `[ <stage1>, <stage2>, ...]` The pipeline cannot include the `$out` and `$merge` stages. Starting in v6.0, the `pipeline` can contain the Atlas Search `$search` stage as the first stage inside the pipeline. To learn more, see Atlas Search Support.

The $unionWith operation would correspond to the following SQL statement:

SELECT *
FROM Collection1
WHERE ...
UNION ALL
SELECT *
FROM Collection2
WHERE ...

Considerations

Duplicate Results

The combined results from the previous stage and the $unionWith stage can include duplicates.

For example, create a suppliers collection and a warehouses collection:

db.suppliers.insertMany([
  { _id: 1, supplier: "Aardvark and Sons", state: "Texas" },
  { _id: 2, supplier: "Bears Run Amok.", state: "Colorado"},
  { _id: 3, supplier: "Squid Mark Inc. ", state: "Rhode Island" },
])

db.warehouses.insertMany([
  { _id: 1, warehouse: "A", region: "West", state: "California" },
  { _id: 2, warehouse: "B", region: "Central", state: "Colorado"},
  { _id: 3, warehouse: "C", region: "East", state: "Florida" },
])

The following aggregation combines the state field projection results from the suppliers and warehouse collections.

db.suppliers.aggregate([
   { $project: { state: 1, _id: 0 } },
   { $unionWith: { coll: "warehouses", pipeline: [ { $project: { state: 1, _id: 0 } } ]} }
])

The result set contains duplicates:

{ "state" : "Texas" }
{ "state" : "Colorado" }
{ "state" : "Rhode Island" }
{ "state" : "California" }
{ "state" : "Colorado" }
{ "state" : "Florida" }

To remove the duplicates, you can include a $group stage to group by the state field:

db.suppliers.aggregate([
   { $project: { state: 1, _id: 0 } },
   { $unionWith: { coll: "warehouses", pipeline: [ { $project: { state: 1, _id: 0 } } ]} },
   { $group: { _id: "$state" } }
])

The result set no longer contains duplicates:

 { "_id" : "California" }
 { "_id" : "Texas" }
 { "_id" : "Florida" }
 { "_id" : "Colorado" }
 { "_id" : "Rhode Island" }

`$unionWith` a Sharded Collection

If the $unionWith stage is part of the $lookup pipeline, the $unionWith coll cannot be sharded. For example, in the following aggregation operation, the inventory_q1 collection cannot be sharded:

db.suppliers.aggregate([
   {
      $lookup: {
         from: "warehouses",
         let: { order_item: "$item", order_qty: "$ordered" },
         pipeline: [
            ...
            { $unionWith: { coll: "inventory_q1", pipeline: [ ... ] } },
            ...
         ],
         as: "stockdata"
      }
   }
])

Collation

If the db.collection.aggregate() includes a collation, that collation is used for the operation, ignoring any other collations.

If the db.collection.aggregate() does not include a collation, the db.collection.aggregate() method uses the collation for the top-level collection/view on which the db.collection.aggregate() is run:

If the $unionWith coll is a collection, its collation is ignored.
If the $unionWith coll is a view, then its collation must match that of the top-level collection/view. Otherwise, the operation errors.

Atlas Search Support

Starting in MongoDB 6.0, you can specify the Atlas Search $search or $searchMeta stage in the $unionWith pipeline to search collections on the Atlas cluster. The $search or the $searchMeta stage must be the first stage inside the $unionWith pipeline.

[{
  "$unionWith": {
    "coll": <collection-name>,
    "pipeline": [{
      "$search": {
        "<operator>": {
          <operator-specification>
        }
      },
      ...
    }]
  }
}]

[{
  "$unionWith": {
    "coll": <collection-name>,
    "pipeline": [{
      "$searchMeta": {
        "<collector>": {
          <collector-specification>
        }
      },
      ...
    }]
  }
}]

To see an example of $unionWith with $search, see the Atlas Search tutorial Run an Atlas Search $search Query Using $unionWith.

Restrictions

Restrictions	Description
transactions	An aggregation pipeline cannot use `$unionWith` inside transactions.
Sharded Collection	If the `$unionWith` stage is part of the $lookup pipeline, the $unionWith coll cannot be sharded.
`$out`	The $unionWith pipeline cannot include the `$out` stage.
`$merge`	The $unionWith pipeline cannot include the `$merge` stage.

Examples

Create Sales Reports from the Union of Yearly Data Collections

The following examples use the $unionWith stage to combine data and return results from multiple collections. In these examples, each collection contains a year of sales data.

Populate Sample Data

Create a sales_2017 collection with the following documents:

db.sales_2017.insertMany( [
  { store: "General Store", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 150 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 50 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cookies", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cookies", quantity: 120 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Pie", quantity: 10 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Pie", quantity: 5 }
] )

Create a sales_2018 collection with the following documents:

db.sales_2018.insertMany( [
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cheese", quantity: 30 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cheese", quantity: 50 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 125 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 150 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cookies", quantity: 200 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cookies", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Nuts", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Pie", quantity: 30 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Pie", quantity: 25 }
] )

Create a sales_2019 collection with the following documents:

db.sales_2019.insertMany( [
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cheese", quantity: 50 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cheese", quantity: 20 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 125 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 150 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cookies", quantity: 200 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cookies", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Nuts", quantity: 80 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Nuts", quantity: 30 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Pie", quantity: 50 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Pie", quantity: 75 }
] )

Create a sales_2020 collection with the following documents:

db.sales_2020.insertMany( [
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cheese", quantity: 100, },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cheese", quantity: 100},
  { store: "General Store", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 200 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Chocolates", quantity: 300 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Cookies", quantity: 500 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Cookies", quantity: 400 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Nuts", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Nuts", quantity: 200 },
  { store: "General Store", item: "Pie", quantity: 100 },
  { store: "ShopMart", item: "Pie", quantity: 100 }
] )

Report 1: All Sales by Year and Stores and Items

The following aggregation creates a yearly sales report that lists all sales by quarter and stores. The pipeline uses $unionWith to combine documents from all four collections:

db.sales_2017.aggregate( [
   { $set: { _id: "2017" } },
   { $unionWith: { coll: "sales_2018", pipeline: [ { $set: { _id: "2018" } } ] } },
   { $unionWith: { coll: "sales_2019", pipeline: [ { $set: { _id: "2019" } } ] } },
   { $unionWith: { coll: "sales_2020", pipeline: [ { $set: { _id: "2020" } } ] } },
   { $sort: { _id: 1, store: 1, item: 1 } }
] )

Specifically, the aggregation pipeline uses:

A $set stage to update the _id field to contain the year.
A sequence of $unionWith stages to combine all documents from the four collections, each also using the $set stage on its documents.
A $sort stage to sort by the _id (the year), the store, and item.

Pipeline output:

{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 150 }
{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 10 }
{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 50 }
{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 120 }
{ "_id" : "2017", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 5 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 30 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 125 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 200 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 30 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 50 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 150 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Nuts", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2018", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 25 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 50 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 125 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 200 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Nuts", "quantity" : 80 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 50 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 20 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 150 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Nuts", "quantity" : 30 }
{ "_id" : "2019", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 75 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 200 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 500 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Nuts", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "General Store", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cheese", "quantity" : 100 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Chocolates", "quantity" : 300 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Cookies", "quantity" : 400 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Nuts", "quantity" : 200 }
{ "_id" : "2020", "store" : "ShopMart", "item" : "Pie", "quantity" : 100 }

Report 2: Aggregated Sales by Items

The following aggregation creates a sales report that lists the sales quantity per item. The pipeline uses $unionWith to combine documents from all four years:

db.sales_2017.aggregate( [
   { $unionWith: "sales_2018" },
   { $unionWith: "sales_2019" },
   { $unionWith: "sales_2020" },
   { $group: { _id: "$item", total: { $sum: "$quantity" } } },
   { $sort: { total: -1 } }
] )

The sequence of $unionWith stages retrieve documents from the specified collections into the pipeline:
The $group stage groups by the item field and uses $sum to calculate the total sales quantity per item.
The $sort stage orders the documents by descending total.