Mongodb find comparing array elements

mongodb

I have a collection with about 200K documents like this:

db.place.find()[0]
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("5290de1111afb260363aa4a1"),
    "name" : "place X",
    "center" : [x, y]   
}

Now I`m trying to query for the places where the center Y is greater than X, and having the following problem:

> db.place.find({'center.0':{'$gt':center.1}}).count()
Sat Nov 23 14:42:01.556 JavaScript execution failed: SyntaxError: Unexpected number

Any hints?
Thanks in advance

Best Solution

Because you happen to have exact format of the field every time (circle is a two element array) you can transform it in aggregation framework into two fields and then compare them in a projection, and match to get back just the elements satisfying your requirement of second array element being greater than first array element.

db.place.aggregate( [
      { $unwind : "$center" },
      { $group : { _id : "$_id", 
                   centerX : {$first:"$center"}, 
                   centerY : {$last:"$center"} 
      } },
      { $project : { YgtX : { $gt : [ "$centerY", "$centerX" ] } } },
      { $match : { YgtX : true } }
] );

Now, if your array was an arbitrary pair of numerical values, then you can use the above.

You said in comments that your pair represented coordinates (lat, long) - keep in mind that in MongoDB coordinate pairs are always stored as long, lat - if your actual x, y values were coordinates in on a flat (as opposed to spherical) place, you could find all the documents that had Y coordinate greater than X coordinate with a single geospatial query:

db.place.find( { center : { $geoWithin : { $geometry : {
                  type:"Polygon", 
                  coordinates:[[[50,50],[-50,50],[-50,-50],[50,50]]]
} } } } );

The above query assumes that your coordinate system goes from -50 to 50 along X and Y and it finds all points in the triangle that represents all coordinates having Y >= X.

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