Count, Limit, Skip & Sort

We can chain some additional functions onto our find query to modify the output.

Count

Count will convert our result set into a number. We can use it in two ways. We can either chain it:

db.people.find({ sharks: 3 }).count();

or we can use it in place of find:

db.people.count({ sharks: 3 });

To count the people who have exactly three sharks.

Don’t confuse it with length(). Length will convert to an array, then count the length of that array. This is inefficient.

Find out how many people there are in total.
Using your collection of people, and $exists, tell me how many people have cats.
Use $where to count how many people have cats which are older than them.

Count can be a slow operation on large data sets. For more on optimising count, you might like to read the following: https://www.compose.io/articles/counting-and-not-counting-with-mongodb/

Limit will allow us to limit the results in the output set. Skip will allow us to to offset the start. Between them they give us pagination.

For example

db.biscuits.find().limit(5);

will give us the first 5 biscuits. If we want the next 5 we can skip the first 5.

db.biscuits.find().limit(5).skip(5);

Give me the first 5 people
Give me the next 5 people
Give me the names and ages of the oldest 5 pensioners with piranhas
Give me the names and ages of the youngest 5 teenagers with cats, where the cats have the word “Yolanda” in their name.

We can sort the results using the sort operator, like so:

db.spiders.find().sort({ hairiness: 1 });

This will sort the spiders in ascending order of hairiness. You can reverse the sort by passing -1.

db.spiders.find().sort({ hairiness: -1 });

This will get the most hairy spiders first.

We can sort by more than one field:

db.spiders.find().sort({
  hairiness: -1,
  scariness: -1,
});

We might also sort by nested fields:

db.spiders.find().sort({
  "web.size": -1,
});

will give the spiders with the largest webs.

Use the stocks data from here:

  mongoimport --db stocks --collection stocks --file stocks.json

=code(code, :bash)

Find me the top 10 most profitable stocks
Add a projection, tell me which sector the most profitable stocks are in.
Which is the least profitable sector.
Have a look at the data. Spend a few minutes deciding which stocks you would most like to invest in.