mongoose own populate with custom query - node.js

Question

I'm trying to create a custom query method in mongoose - similar to the populate()-function of mongoose. I've the following two simple schemas:
const mongoose = require('mongoose')
const bookSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
title: String,
author: {type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, required: true, ref: 'Author'}
}, {versionKey: false})
const authorSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
name: String
}, {versionKey: false})
Now, I want retrieve authors information and furthermore the books written by the author. As far as I know, mongoose provides custom queries, hence my idea was to write a custom query function like:
authorSchema.query.populateBooks = function () {
// semi-code:
return forAll(foundAuthors).findAll(books)
}
Now, to get all authors and all books, I can simply run:
authorModel.find({}).populateBooks(console.log)
This should result in something like this:
[ {name: "Author 1", books: ["Book 1", "Book 2"]}, {name: "Author 2", books: ["Book 3"] } ]
Unfortunately, it doesn't work because I don't know how I can access the list of authors selected previously in my populateBooks function. What I need in my custom query function is the collection of the previous-selected documents.
For example, authorModel.find({}) already returns a list of authors. In populateBooks() I need to iterate through this list to find all books for all authors. Anyone know how I can access this collection or if it's even possible?

Answer 1

populate: "Population is the process of automatically replacing the specified paths in the document with document(s) from other collection(s)" (from the docs i linked).
Based on your question, you're not looking for population. yours is a simple query (the following code is to achieve the example result you gave at the end. note that your books field had a value of an array of strings, I'm assuming those were the titles). Also, do note that the following code will work with the models you've already provided, but this is a bad implementation that i recommend against - for multiple reasons: efficiency, elegance, potential errors (for e.g, authors with identical names), see note after code:
Author.find({}, function(err, foundAuthors){
if (err){
console.log(err); //handle error
}
//now all authors are objects in foundAuthors
//but if you had certain search parameters, foundAuthors only includes those authors
var completeList = [];
for (i=0;i<foundAuthors.length;i++){
completeList.push({name: foundAuthors[i].name, books: []});
}
Book.find({}).populate("author").exec(function(err, foundBooks){
if (err){
console.log(err); //handle err
}
for (j=0;j<foundBooks.length;j++){
for (k=0;k<completeList.length;k++){
if (completeList[k].name === foundBooks[j].author.name){
completeList[k].books.push(foundBooks[j].title);
}
}
}
//at this point, completeList has exactly the result you asked for
});
});
However, as i stated, i recommend against this implementation, this was based on the code you already provided without changing it.
I recommend changing your author schema to include a books property:
var AuthorSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
books: [{
type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
ref: "Book"
}]
//all your other code for the schema
});
And add all books to their respective authors. This way, all you would need to do to get an array of objects, each of which contains an author and all of his books is one query:
Author.find({}).populate("books").exec(function(err, foundAuthors){
//if there's no err, then foundAuthors is an array of authors with their books
});
That is far simpler, more efficient, more elegant and more effective than the earlier possible solution i gave, based on your already existing code without changing it.