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$setIntersection (aggregation)

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  • Definition
  • Behavior
  • Examples
$setIntersection

Takes two or more arrays and returns an array that contains the elements that appear in every input array.

$setIntersection has the following syntax:

{ $setIntersection: [ <array1>, <array2>, ... ] }

The arguments can be any valid expression as long as they each resolve to an array. For more information on expressions, see Expression Operators.

$setIntersection performs set operation on arrays, treating arrays as sets. If an array contains duplicate entries, $setIntersection ignores the duplicate entries. $setIntersection ignores the order of the elements.

$setIntersection filters out duplicates in its result to output an array that contain only unique entries. The order of the elements in the output array is unspecified.

If no intersections are found (i.e. the input arrays contain no common elements), $setIntersection returns an empty array.

If a set contains a nested array element, $setIntersection does not descend into the nested array but evaluates the array at top-level.

Example
Result
{ $setIntersection: [ [ "a", "b", "a" ], [ "b", "a" ] ] }
[ "b", "a" ]
{ $setIntersection: [ [ "a", "b" ], [ [ "a", "b" ] ] ] }
[ ]

This section contains examples that show the use of $setIntersection with collections.

Consider an flowers collection with the following documents:

db.flowers.insertMany( [
{ "_id" : 1, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose", "orchid" ] },
{ "_id" : 2, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "orchid", "rose", "orchid" ] },
{ "_id" : 3, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose", "orchid", "jasmine" ] },
{ "_id" : 4, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "jasmine", "rose" ] },
{ "_id" : 5, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ ] },
{ "_id" : 6, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ [ "rose" ], [ "orchid" ] ] },
{ "_id" : 7, "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ [ "rose", "orchid" ] ] },
{ "_id" : 8, "flowerFieldA" : [ ], "flowerFieldB" : [ ] },
{ "_id" : 9, "flowerFieldA" : [ ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose" ] }
] )

The following operation uses the $setIntersection operator to return an array of elements common to both the flowerFieldA array and the flowerFieldB array:

db.flowers.aggregate(
[
{ $project: { flowerFieldA: 1, flowerFieldB: 1, commonToBoth: { $setIntersection: [ "$flowerFieldA", "$flowerFieldB" ] }, _id: 0 } }
]
)

The operation returns the following results:

{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "commonToBoth" : [ "orchid", "rose" ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "orchid", "rose", "orchid" ], "commonToBoth" : [ "orchid", "rose" ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose", "orchid", "jasmine" ], "commonToBoth" : [ "orchid", "rose" ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "jasmine", "rose" ], "commonToBoth" : [ "rose" ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ ], "commonToBoth" : [ ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ [ "rose" ], [ "orchid" ] ], "commonToBoth" : [ ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ "rose", "orchid" ], "flowerFieldB" : [ [ "rose", "orchid" ] ], "commonToBoth" : [ ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ ], "flowerFieldB" : [ ], "commonToBoth" : [ ] }
{ "flowerFieldA" : [ ], "flowerFieldB" : [ "rose" ], "commonToBoth" : [ ] }

Starting in MongoDB 7.0, you can use the new USER_ROLES system variable to return user roles.

The scenario in this section shows users with various roles who have limited access to documents in a collection containing budget information.

The scenario shows one possible use of USER_ROLES. The budget collection contains documents with a field named allowedRoles. As you'll see in the following scenario, you can write queries that compare the user roles found in the allowedRoles field with the roles returned by the USER_ROLES system variable.

Note

For another USER_ROLES example scenario, see Retrieve Medical Information for Roles Granted to the Current User. That example doesn't store the user roles in the document fields, as is done in the following example.

For the budget scenario in this section, perform the following steps to create the roles, users, and budget collection:

1

Run:

db.createRole( { role: "Marketing", roles: [], privileges: [] } )
db.createRole( { role: "Sales", roles: [], privileges: [] } )
db.createRole( { role: "Development", roles: [], privileges: [] } )
db.createRole( { role: "Operations", roles: [], privileges: [] } )
2

Create users named John and Jane with the required roles. Replace the test database with your database name.

db.createUser( {
user: "John",
pwd: "jn008",
roles: [
{ role: "Marketing", db: "test" },
{ role: "Development", db: "test" },
{ role: "Operations", db: "test" },
{ role: "read", db: "test" }
]
} )
db.createUser( {
user: "Jane",
pwd: "je009",
roles: [
{ role: "Sales", db: "test" },
{ role: "Operations", db: "test" },
{ role: "read", db: "test" }
]
} )
3

Run:

db.budget.insertMany( [
{
_id: 0,
allowedRoles: [ "Marketing" ],
comment: "For marketing team",
yearlyBudget: 15000
},
{
_id: 1,
allowedRoles: [ "Sales" ],
comment: "For sales team",
yearlyBudget: 17000,
salesEventsBudget: 1000
},
{
_id: 2,
allowedRoles: [ "Operations" ],
comment: "For operations team",
yearlyBudget: 19000,
cloudBudget: 12000
},
{
_id: 3,
allowedRoles: [ "Development" ],
comment: "For development team",
yearlyBudget: 27000
}
] )

Perform the following steps to retrieve the documents accessible to John:

1

Run:

db.auth( "John", "jn008" )
2

To use a system variable, add $$ to the start of the variable name. Specify the USER_ROLES system variable as $$USER_ROLES.

Run:

db.budget.aggregate( [ {
$match: {
$expr: {
$not: {
$eq: [ { $setIntersection: [ "$allowedRoles", "$$USER_ROLES.role" ] }, [] ]
}
}
}
} ] )

The previous example returns the documents from the budget collection that match at least one of the roles that the user who runs the example has. To do that, the example uses $setIntersection to return documents where the intersection between the budget document allowedRoles field and the set of user roles from $$USER_ROLES is not empty.

3

John has the Marketing, Operations, and Development roles, and sees these documents:

[
{
_id: 0,
allowedRoles: [ 'Marketing' ],
comment: 'For marketing team',
yearlyBudget: 15000
},
{
_id: 2,
allowedRoles: [ 'Operations' ],
comment: 'For operations team',
yearlyBudget: 19000,
cloudBudget: 12000
},
{
_id: 3,
allowedRoles: [ 'Development' ],
comment: 'For development team',
yearlyBudget: 27000
}
]

Perform the following steps to retrieve the documents accessible to Jane:

1

Run:

db.auth( "Jane", "je009" )
2

To use a system variable, add $$ to the start of the variable name. Specify the USER_ROLES system variable as $$USER_ROLES.

Run:

db.budget.aggregate( [ {
$match: {
$expr: {
$not: {
$eq: [ { $setIntersection: [ "$allowedRoles", "$$USER_ROLES.role" ] }, [] ]
}
}
}
} ] )
3

Jane has the Sales and Operations roles, and sees these documents:

[
{
_id: 1,
allowedRoles: [ 'Sales' ],
comment: 'For sales team',
yearlyBudget: 17000,
salesEventsBudget: 1000
},
{
_id: 2,
allowedRoles: [ 'Operations' ],
comment: 'For operations team',
yearlyBudget: 19000,
cloudBudget: 12000
}
]

Note

On a sharded cluster, a query can be run on a shard by another server node on behalf of the user. In those queries, USER_ROLES is still populated with the roles for the user.

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