$zip (aggregation)
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Definition
$zip
Transposes an array of input arrays so that the first element of the output array would be an array containing, the first element of the first input array, the first element of the second input array, etc.
For example,
$zip
would transform[ [ 1, 2, 3 ], [ "a", "b", "c" ] ]
into[ [ 1, "a" ], [ 2, "b" ], [ 3, "c" ] ]
.$zip
has the following syntax:{ $zip: { inputs: [ <array expression1>, ... ], useLongestLength: <boolean>, defaults: <array expression> } } OperandDescriptioninputs
An array of expressions that resolve to arrays. The elements of these input arrays combine to form the arrays of the output array.
If any of the
inputs
arrays resolves to a value ofnull
or refers to a missing field,$zip
returnsnull
.If any of the
inputs
arrays does not resolve to an array ornull
nor refers to a missing field,$zip
returns an error.useLongestLength
A boolean which specifies whether the length of the longest array determines the number of arrays in the output array.
The default value is
false
: the shortest array length determines the number of arrays in the output array.defaults
An array of default element values to use if the input arrays have different lengths. You must specify
useLongestLength: true
along with this field, or else$zip
will return an error.If
useLongestLength: true
butdefaults
is empty or not specified,$zip
usesnull
as the default value.If specifying a non-empty
defaults
, you must specify a default for each input array or else$zip
will return an error.
Behavior
The input arrays do not need to be of the same length. By default,
the output array has the length of the shortest input array, but the
useLongestLength
option instructs $zip
to output
an array as long as the longest input array.
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Example
Matrix Transposition
A collection called matrices
contains the following documents:
db.matrices.insertMany([ { matrix: [[1, 2], [2, 3], [3, 4]] }, { matrix: [[8, 7], [7, 6], [5, 4]] }, ])
To compute the transpose of each 3x2 matrix in this collection, you can use the following aggregation operation:
db.matrices.aggregate([{ $project: { _id: false, transposed: { $zip: { inputs: [ { $arrayElemAt: [ "$matrix", 0 ] }, { $arrayElemAt: [ "$matrix", 1 ] }, { $arrayElemAt: [ "$matrix", 2 ] }, ] } } } }])
This will return the following 2x3 matrices:
{ "transposed" : [ [ 1, 2, 3 ], [ 2, 3, 4 ] ] } { "transposed" : [ [ 8, 7, 5 ], [ 7, 6, 4 ] ] }
Filtering and Preserving Indexes
You can use $zip
with $filter
to obtain a subset of
elements in an array, saving the original index alongside each
retained element.
A collection called pages
contains the following document:
db.pages.save( { "category": "unix", "pages": [ { "title": "awk for beginners", reviews: 5 }, { "title": "sed for newbies", reviews: 0 }, { "title": "grep made simple", reviews: 2 }, ] } )
The following aggregation pipeline will first zip the elements of the
pages
array together with their index, and then filter out only the
pages with at least one review:
db.pages.aggregate([{ $project: { _id: false, pages: { $filter: { input: { $zip: { inputs: [ "$pages", { $range: [0, { $size: "$pages" }] } ] } }, as: "pageWithIndex", cond: { $let: { vars: { page: { $arrayElemAt: [ "$$pageWithIndex", 0 ] } }, in: { $gte: [ "$$page.reviews", 1 ] } } } } } } }])
This will return the following document:
{ "pages" : [ [ { "title" : "awk for beginners", "reviews" : 5 }, 0 ], [ { "title" : "grep made simple", "reviews" : 2 }, 2 ] ] }