MongoClient dot vs standard key value access - node.js

I ran into an interesting scenario today working on some code that I've been trying to research with no such luck as of yet. Would like someone to shine some light on the situation if they can please.
Ingredients is a list of JSON objects that is stored in each recipe. dbIngredient is a single ingredient I pull back using a findOne call with MongoClient. The comparison is the if statement that is currently returning false if I have something like tbsp for both values.
recipe.ingredients.forEach(async (ingredient) => {
// This will convert the ingredients as needed and form the grocery list.
let dbIngredient = await db.collection('ingredients').findOne({ 'text_friendly_name': ingredient.text_friendly_name });
if (dbIngredient.most_used_measurement != ingredient.measurement)
{
ingredient.quantity = unitConverter.convertMeasurement(ingredient.quantity, ingredient.measurement, dbIngredient.most_used_measurement);
}
});
Using the dot notation doesn't appear to ever return a true, but if I use bracket notation like so dbIngredient['most_used_measurement'] != ingredient['measurement'] the statement is evaluated as true. Does anyone know why the dot notation fails but the bracket notation doesn't?

Related

Transforming large array of objects to csv using json2csv

I need to transform a large array of JSON (that can have over 100k positions) into a CSV.
This array is created directly in the application, it's not the result of an uploaded file.
Looking at the documentation, I've thought on using parser but it says that:
For that reason is rarely a good reason to use it until your data is very small or your application doesn't do anything else.
Because the data is not small and my app will do other things than creating the csv, I don't think it'll be the best approach but I may be misunderstanding the documentation.
Is it possible to use the others options (async parser or transform) with an already created data (and not a stream of data)?
FYI: It's a nest application but I'm using this node.js lib.
Update: I've tryied to insert with an array with over 300k positions, and it went smoothly.
Why do you need any external modules?
Converting JSON into a javascript array of javascript objects is a piece of cake with the native JSON.parse() function.
let jsontxt=await fs.readFile('mythings.json','uft8');
let mythings = JSON.parse(jsontxt);
if (!Array.isArray(mythings)) throw "Oooops, stranger things happen!"
And, then, converting a javascript array into a CSV is very straightforward.
The most obvious and absurd case is just mapping every element of the array into a string that is the JSON representation of the object element. You end up with a useless CSV with a single column containing every element of your original array. And then joining the resulting strings array into a single string, separated by newlines \n. It's good for nothing but, heck, it's a CSV!
let csvtxt = mythings.map(JSON.stringify).join("\n");
await fs.writeFile("mythings.csv",csvtxt,"utf8");
Now, you can feel that you are almost there. Replace the useless mapping function into your own
let csvtxt = mythings.map(mapElementToColumns).join("\n");
and choose a good mapping between the fields of the objects of your array, and the columns of your csv.
function mapElementToColumns(element) {
return `${JSON.stringify(element.id)},${JSON.stringify(element.name)},${JSON.stringify(element.value)}`;
}
or, in a more thorough way
function mapElementToColumns(fieldNames) {
return function (element) {
let fields = fieldnames.map(n => element[n] ? JSON.stringify(element[n]) : '""');
return fields.join(',');
}
}
that you may invoke in your map
mythings.map(mapElementToColumns(["id","name","element"])).join("\n");
Finally, you might decide to use an automated for "all fields in all objects" approach; which requires that all the objects in the original array maintain a similar fields schema.
You extract all the fields of the first object of the array, and use them as the header row of the csv and as the template for extracting the rest of the elements.
let fieldnames = Object.keys(mythings[0]);
and then use this field names array as parameter of your map function
let csvtxt= mythings.map(mapElementToColumns(fieldnames)).join("\n");
and, also, prepending them as the CSV header
csvtxt.unshift(fieldnames.join(','))
Putting all the pieces together...
function mapElementToColumns(fieldNames) {
return function (element) {
let fields = fieldnames.map(n => element[n] ? JSON.stringify(element[n]) : '""');
return fields.join(',');
}
}
let jsontxt=await fs.readFile('mythings.json','uft8');
let mythings = JSON.parse(jsontxt);
if (!Array.isArray(mythings)) throw "Oooops, stranger things happen!";
let fieldnames = Object.keys(mythings[0]);
let csvtxt= mythings.map(mapElementToColumns(fieldnames)).join("\n");
csvtxt.unshift(fieldnames.join(','));
await fs.writeFile("mythings.csv",csvtxt,"utf8");
And that's it. Pretty neat, uh?

Why would you use the spread operator to spread a variable onto itself?

In the Google Getting started with Node.js tutorial they perform the following operation
data = {...data};
in the code for sending data to Firestore.
You can see it on their Github, line 63.
As far as I can tell this doesn't do anything.
Is there a good reason for doing this?
Is it potentially future proofing, so that if you added your own data you'd be less likely to do something like data = {data, moreData}?
#Manu's answer details what the line of code is doing, but not why it's there.
I don't know exactly why the Google code example uses this approach, but I would guess at the following reason (and would do the same myself in this situation):
Because objects in JavaScript are passed by reference, it becomes necessary to rebuild the 'data' object from it's constituent parts to avoid the original data object being further modified by the ref.set(data) call on line 64 of the example code:
await ref.set(data);
For example, in MongoDB, when you pass an object into a write or update method, Mongo will actually modify the object to add extra properties such as the datetime it was insert into a collection or it's ID within the collection. I don't know for sure if Firestore does the same, but if it doesn't now, it's possible that it may in future. If it does, and if your original code that calls the update method from Google's example code goes on to further manipulate the data object that it originally passed, that object would now have extra properties on it that may cause unexpected problems. Therefore, it's prudent to rebuild the data object from the original object's properties to avoid contamination of the original object elsewhere in code.
I hope that makes sense - the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this must be the reason and it's actually a great learning point.
I include the full original function from Google's code here in case others come across this in future, since the code is subject to change (copied from https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-getting-started/blob/master/bookshelf/books/firestore.js at the time of writing this answer):
// Creates a new book or updates an existing book with new data.
async function update(id, data) {
let ref;
if (id === null) {
ref = db.collection(collection).doc();
} else {
ref = db.collection(collection).doc(id);
}
data.id = ref.id;
data = {...data};
await ref.set(data);
return data;
}
It's making a shallow copy of data; let's say you have a third-party function that mutates the input:
const foo = input => {
input['changed'] = true;
}
And you need to call it, but don't want to get your object modified, so instead of:
data = {life: 42}
foo(data)
// > data
// { life: 42, changed: true }
You may use the Spread Syntax:
data = {life: 42}
foo({...data})
// > data
// { life: 42 }
Not sure if this is the particular case with Firestone but the thing is: spreading an object you get a shallow copy of that obj.
===
Related: Object copy using Spread operator actually shallow or deep?

How to get protobuf.js to output enum strings instead of integers

I'm using the latest protobuf.js with Node.js 4.4.5.
I currently struggle to get protobuf.js to output the string definitions of enums instead of integers. I tried several suggestions, but none of them worked:
https://github.com/dcodeIO/ProtoBuf.js/issues/97
https://github.com/dcodeIO/protobuf.js/issues/349
I guess it's because of API changes in protobuf.js for the first one. For the second one, I can use the suggested solution partially, but if the message is nested within other messages, the builder seems to fall back to using the integer values, although the string values have been explicitly set.
Ideally, I'd like to overwrite the function which is used for producing the enum values, but I have a hard time finding the correct one with the debugger. Or is there a better way to achieve this for deeply nested objects?
The generated JS code from protoc has a map in one direction only e.g.
proto.foo.Bar.Myenum = {
HEY: 0,
HO: 1
};
Rationale for this is here but you have to the reverse lookup in your own JS code. There are lots of easy solutions for this. I used the one at https://stackoverflow.com/a/59360329/449347 i.e.
Generic reverse mapper function ...
export function getKey(map, val) {
return Object.keys(map).find(key => map[key] === val);
}
UT ...
import { Bar } from "js/proto/bar_pb";
expect(getKey(proto.foo.Bar.Myenum, 0)).toEqual("HEY");
expect(getKey(proto.foo.Bar.Myenum, 1)).toEqual("HO");
expect(getKey(proto.foo.Bar.Myenum, 99)).toBeUndefined();

Couchdb query for values calculated from key input

suppose i have the following data in my database:
[1,2],[2,1],[1,3],[3,1]...
were the numbers represent the a and b values of the formula a*x+b
what i now want is a query that returns the difference to a given point x,y.
for example: the point [2,6] is given. i want my query to return
[1,2] = -2 (1*2+2=4 4-6=-2)
[2,1] = -1 (2*2+1=5 5-6=-1)
[1,3] = -1 (1*2+3=5 4-6=-1)
[3,1] = 1 (3*2+1=7 7-6=-1)
I know how to do this in SQL but the data is already in a couchdb. I'm quite new to the NoSQL world and was wondering if something like this would be possible in couchdb.
what you can do is to use the standard MapReduce functionality of CouchDB.
Map is function you put in a view, which finds your data. You can have various criteria how to locate the docs you need. Next, if you specify so in the query with reduce=true, a reduce function is executed on each document that matched the map condition. You can use JavaScript to perform various operations on the document's values.
In your case, the map can look something like this:
function(doc) {
if(doc.a && doc.b) {
emit(doc._id,[doc.a, doc.b]);
}
}
then, the reduce gets called, like this:
function(keys, values, rereduce) {
var res;
//do something with values...
return res;
}
In your case keys will be list of document ID's and values will be the array of your a & b fields.
When you call the MapReduce (depending what method you use to access the DB), you should specify reduce=true.
Good resources on MapReduce (and on Views, Sorting and List funtions) are:
http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/views.html
http://www.slideshare.net/okurow/couchdb-mapreduce-13321353
Another way to go is to use a list function on the Map result, if you want to output the result in HTML. A good reason to use List function is that you can pass arguments to it with querystring, in your case it may be the point for which you want to calculate distances.
For detailed description on List functions, have a look here:
http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/transforming.html
Hope this helps.

What is in the reduce function arguments in CouchDB?

I understand that the reduce function is supposed to somewhat combine the results of the map function but what exactly is passed to the reduce function?
function(keys, values){
// what's in keys?
// what's in values?
}
I tried to explore this in the Futon temporary view builder but all I got were reduce_overflow_errors. So I can't even print the keys or values arguments to try to understand what they look like.
Thanks for your help.
Edit:
My problem is the following. I'm using the temporary view builder of Futon.
I have a set of document representing text files (it's for a script I want to use to make translation of documents easier).
text_file:
id // the id of the text file is its path on the file system
I also have some documents that represent text fragments appearing in the said files, and their position in each file.
text_fragment:
id
file_id // correspond to a text_file document
position
I'd like to get for each text_file, a list of the text fragments that appear in the said file.
Update
Note on JavaScript API change: Prior to Tue, 20 May 2008 (Subversion revision r658405) the function to emit a row to the map index, was named "map". It has now been changed to "emit".
That's the reason why there is mapused instead of emitit was renamed. Sorry I corrected my code to be valid in the recent version of CouchDB.
Edit
I think what you are looking for is a has-many relationship or a join in sql db language. Here is a blog article by Christopher Lenz that describes exactly what your options are for this kind of scenario in CouchDB.
In the last part there is a technique described that you can use for the list you want.
You need a map function of the following format
function(doc) {
if (doc.type == "text_file") {
emit([doc._id, 0], doc);
} else if (doc.type == "text_fragment") {
emit([doc.file_id, 1], doc);
}
}
Now you can query the view in the following way:
my_view?startkey=["text_file_id"]&endkey;=["text_file_id", 2]
This gives you a list of the form
text_file
text_fragement_1
text_fragement_2
..
Old Answer
Directly from the CouchDB Wiki
function (key, values, rereduce) {
return sum(values);
}
Reduce functions are passed three arguments in the order key, values and rereduce
Reduce functions must handle two cases:
When rereduce is false:
key will be an array whose elements are arrays of the form [key,id], where key is a key emitted by the map function and id is that of the document from which the key was generated.
values will be an array of the values emitted for the respective elements in keys
i.e. reduce([ [key1,id1], [key2,id2], [key3,id3] ], [value1,value2,value3], false)
When rereduce is true:
key will be null
values will be an array of values returned by previous calls to the reduce function
i.e. reduce(null, [intermediate1,intermediate2,intermediate3], true)
Reduce functions should return a single value, suitable for both the value field of the final view and as a member of the values array passed to the reduce function.

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