searching an array of values against mongoose - node.js

Question

I am not sure how I need to do what I'm wanting to do. My schemas are like this:
var userObj = mongoose.Schema({
'timestamp':{type: Date, default: Date.now()},
'password':{type:String, required:true},
"userName":{type:String, required:true, unique:true}
});
var groupSchema = mongoose.Schema({
'creator':String,
'members':Array, //contains the _id of users added to the group
'admins':Array,
'name':String,
'timestamp':{type: Date, default: Date.now()},
'description':String
});
Where the members schema has an array that contains IDs of users. I need to take the array from the group document and get back user names.
I started out with a loop using the mongoose .find() method and pushing the result into an array - but as I expected the array is empty outside of the scope of the callback function.
var dat = [];
for(var i = 0; i<passed.payload.length;i++){
user.find({'_id':passed.payload[i]},'userName',function(err,result){
if(err){
console.log(err);
}else{
dat.push(result);
}
})
}
//res.send(dat)
console.log(dat);
I am not sure how to do this - I considered using .find to pull all user IDs then running the array to return back only matches. That seems like a waste of resources to pull the full users table then test it.
Is there a more complex query I can use with mongoose to pull data like this using an array of _ids to match?

Answer 1

Have you considered using the $in operator?
db.users.find( { userName: { $in: ["Paul", "Jenna" ] } } )
This should be more efficient and removes the loop as well.
here a link to the MongoDB docs
https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/operator/query/in/#op._S_in

Answer 2

The reason you are getting an empty array outside for loop is mongoose queries are asynchronous (in your case User.find()) and therefore for loop will be completed before mongoose queries are completed resulting into empty array you are getting. You can handle this either by using promises or some npm module like async.
However, as #karlkurzer suggested you don't need to loop through an array here, you can instead use $in operator. Above code can be replaced with,
user.find({'_id': {$in: passed.payload}},'userName',function(err,results){
if(err){
console.log(err);
}else{
console.log(results); //You will get array of user names here
}
});
and you should get an array of userNames associated with ids you passed in callback.
Hope this helps!