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$facet (aggregation)

On this page

  • Definition
  • Compatibility
  • Syntax
  • Considerations
  • Behavior
  • Example

Definition

$facet

Processes multiple aggregation pipelines within a single stage on the same set of input documents. Each sub-pipeline has its own field in the output document where its results are stored as an array of documents.

The $facet stage allows you to create multi-faceted aggregations which characterize data across multiple dimensions, or facets, within a single aggregation stage. Multi-faceted aggregations provide multiple filters and categorizations to guide data browsing and analysis. Retailers commonly use faceting to narrow search results by creating filters on product price, manufacturer, size, etc.

Input documents are passed to the $facet stage only once. $facet enables various aggregations on the same set of input documents, without needing to retrieve the input documents multiple times.

Compatibility

You can use $facet for deployments hosted in the following environments:

  • MongoDB Atlas: The fully managed service for MongoDB deployments in the cloud

Syntax

The $facet stage has the following form:

{ $facet:
    {
      <outputField1>: [ <stage1>, <stage2>, ... ],
      <outputField2>: [ <stage1>, <stage2>, ... ],
      ...
    }
}

Specify the output field name for each specified pipeline.

Considerations

As each stage in a $facet executes, the resulting document is limited to 100 megabytes. Note the allowDiskUse flag doesn't affect the 100 megabyte size limit, since $facet can't spill to disk.

The final output document is subject to the 16 megabyte BSON document size limit. If it exceeds 16 megabytes, the aggregation produces an error.

Tip

See also:

Aggregation Pipeline Limits

Behavior

Facet-related aggregation stages categorize and group incoming documents. Specify any of the following facet-related stages within different $facet sub-pipeline's <stage> to perform a multi-faceted aggregation:

Other aggregation stages can also be used with $facet with the following exceptions:

Each sub-pipeline within $facet is passed the exact same set of input documents. These sub-pipelines are completely independent of one another and the document array output by each is stored in separate fields in the output document. The output of one sub-pipeline can not be used as the input for a different sub-pipeline within the same $facet stage. If further aggregations are required, add additional stages after $facet and specify the field name, <outputField>, of the desired sub-pipeline output.

Index Use

Pipeline order determines how the $facet stage uses indexes.

  • If the $facet stage is the first stage in a pipeline, the stage will perform a COLLSCAN. The $facet stage does not make use of indexes if it is the first stage in the pipeline.

  • If the $facet stage comes later in the pipeline and earlier stages have used indexes, $facet will not trigger a COLLSCAN during execution.

For example, $match or $sort stages that come before a $facet stage can make use of indexes and the $facet will not trigger a COLLSCAN.

For optimization suggestions, see: Aggregation Pipeline Optimization.

Example

Consider an online store whose inventory is stored in the following artwork collection:

{ "_id" : 1, "title" : "The Pillars of Society", "artist" : "Grosz", "year" : 1926,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("199.99"),
  "tags" : [ "painting", "satire", "Expressionism", "caricature" ] }
{ "_id" : 2, "title" : "Melancholy III", "artist" : "Munch", "year" : 1902,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("280.00"),
  "tags" : [ "woodcut", "Expressionism" ] }
{ "_id" : 3, "title" : "Dancer", "artist" : "Miro", "year" : 1925,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("76.04"),
  "tags" : [ "oil", "Surrealism", "painting" ] }
{ "_id" : 4, "title" : "The Great Wave off Kanagawa", "artist" : "Hokusai",
  "price" : NumberDecimal("167.30"),
  "tags" : [ "woodblock", "ukiyo-e" ] }
{ "_id" : 5, "title" : "The Persistence of Memory", "artist" : "Dali", "year" : 1931,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("483.00"),
  "tags" : [ "Surrealism", "painting", "oil" ] }
{ "_id" : 6, "title" : "Composition VII", "artist" : "Kandinsky", "year" : 1913,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("385.00"),
  "tags" : [ "oil", "painting", "abstract" ] }
{ "_id" : 7, "title" : "The Scream", "artist" : "Munch", "year" : 1893,
  "tags" : [ "Expressionism", "painting", "oil" ] }
{ "_id" : 8, "title" : "Blue Flower", "artist" : "O'Keefe", "year" : 1918,
  "price" : NumberDecimal("118.42"),
  "tags" : [ "abstract", "painting" ] }

The following operation uses MongoDB's faceting features to provide customers with the store's inventory categorized across multiple dimensions such as tags, price, and year created. This $facet stage has three sub-pipelines that use $sortByCount, $bucket, or $bucketAuto to perform this multi-faceted aggregation. The input documents from artwork are fetched from the database only once, at the beginning of the operation:

db.artwork.aggregate( [
  {
    $facet: {
      "categorizedByTags": [
        { $unwind: "$tags" },
        { $sortByCount: "$tags" }
      ],
      "categorizedByPrice": [
        // Filter out documents without a price e.g., _id: 7
        { $match: { price: { $exists: 1 } } },
        {
          $bucket: {
            groupBy: "$price",
            boundaries: [  0, 150, 200, 300, 400 ],
            default: "Other",
            output: {
              "count": { $sum: 1 },
              "titles": { $push: "$title" }
            }
          }
        }
      ],
      "categorizedByYears(Auto)": [
        {
          $bucketAuto: {
            groupBy: "$year",
            buckets: 4
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
])

The operation returns the following document:

{
  "categorizedByYears(Auto)" : [
    // First bucket includes the document without a year, e.g., _id: 4
    { "_id" : { "min" : null, "max" : 1902 }, "count" : 2 },
    { "_id" : { "min" : 1902, "max" : 1918 }, "count" : 2 },
    { "_id" : { "min" : 1918, "max" : 1926 }, "count" : 2 },
    { "_id" : { "min" : 1926, "max" : 1931 }, "count" : 2 }
  ],
  "categorizedByPrice" : [
    {
      "_id" : 0,
      "count" : 2,
      "titles" : [
        "Dancer",
        "Blue Flower"
      ]
    },
    {
      "_id" : 150,
      "count" : 2,
      "titles" : [
        "The Pillars of Society",
        "The Great Wave off Kanagawa"
      ]
    },
    {
      "_id" : 200,
      "count" : 1,
      "titles" : [
        "Melancholy III"
      ]
    },
    {
      "_id" : 300,
      "count" : 1,
      "titles" : [
        "Composition VII"
      ]
    },
    {
      // Includes document price outside of bucket boundaries, e.g., _id: 5
      "_id" : "Other",
      "count" : 1,
      "titles" : [
        "The Persistence of Memory"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "categorizedByTags" : [
    { "_id" : "painting", "count" : 6 },
    { "_id" : "oil", "count" : 4 },
    { "_id" : "Expressionism", "count" : 3 },
    { "_id" : "Surrealism", "count" : 2 },
    { "_id" : "abstract", "count" : 2 },
    { "_id" : "woodblock", "count" : 1 },
    { "_id" : "woodcut", "count" : 1 },
    { "_id" : "ukiyo-e", "count" : 1 },
    { "_id" : "satire", "count" : 1 },
    { "_id" : "caricature", "count" : 1 }
  ]
}

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$documents (aggregation)