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mongoDB/mongoose: unique if not null

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Question

I was wondering if there is way to force a unique collection entry but only if entry is not null. e Sample schema:

var UsersSchema = new Schema({
    name  : {type: String, trim: true, index: true, required: true},
    email : {type: String, trim: true, index: true, unique: true}
});

'email' in this case is not required but if 'email' is saved I want to make sure that this entry is unique (on a database level).

Empty entries seem to get the value 'null' so every entry wih no email crashes with the 'unique' option (if there is a different user with no email).

Right now I'm solving it on an application level, but would love to save that db query.

thx

1
84
10/31/2011 2:26:05 PM

Accepted Answer

As of MongoDB v1.8+ you can get the desired behavior of ensuring unique values but allowing multiple docs without the field by setting the sparse option to true when defining the index. As in:

email : {type: String, trim: true, index: true, unique: true, sparse: true}

Or in the shell:

db.users.ensureIndex({email: 1}, {unique: true, sparse: true});

Note that a unique, sparse index still does not allow multiple docs with an email field with a value of null, only multiple docs without an email field.

See http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/index-sparse/

139
6/24/2015 3:14:21 PM

tl;dr

Yes, it is possible to have multiple documents with a field set to null or not defined, while enforcing unique "actual" values.

requirements:

  • MongoDB v3.2+.
  • Knowing your concrete value type(s) in advance (e.g, always a string or object when not null).

If you're not interested in the details, feel free to skip to the implementation section.

longer version

To supplement @Nolan's answer, starting with MongoDB v3.2 you can use a partial unique index with a filter expression.

The partial filter expression has limitations. It can only include the following:

  • equality expressions (i.e. field: value or using the $eq operator),
  • $exists: true expression,
  • $gt, $gte, $lt, $lte expressions,
  • $type expressions,
  • $and operator at the top-level only

This means that the trivial expression {"yourField"{$ne: null}} cannot be used.

However, assuming that your field always uses the same type, you can use a $type expression.

{ field: { $type: <BSON type number> | <String alias> } }

MongoDB v3.6 added support for specifying multiple possible types, which can be passed as an array:

{ field: { $type: [ <BSON type1> , <BSON type2>, ... ] } }

which means that it allows the value to be of any of a number of multiple types when not null.

Therefore, if we want to allow the email field in the example below to accept either string or, say, binary data values, an appropriate $type expression would be:

{email: {$type: ["string", "binData"]}}

implementation

mongoose

You can specify it in a mongoose schema:

const UsersSchema = new Schema({
  name: {type: String, trim: true, index: true, required: true},
  email: {
    type: String, trim: true, index: {
      unique: true,
      partialFilterExpression: {email: {$type: "string"}}
    }
  }
});

or directly add it to the collection (which uses the native node.js driver):

User.collection.createIndex("email", {
  unique: true,
  partialFilterExpression: {
    "email": {
      $type: "string"
    }
  }
});

native mongodb driver

using collection.createIndex

db.collection('users').createIndex({
    "email": 1
  }, {
    unique: true,
    partialFilterExpression: {
      "email": {
        $type: "string"
      }
    }
  },
  function (err, results) {
    // ...
  }
);

mongodb shell

using db.collection.createIndex:

db.users.createIndex({
  "email": 1
}, {
  unique: true, 
  partialFilterExpression: {
    "email": {$type: "string"}
  }
})

This will allow inserting multiple records with a null email, or without an email field at all, but not with the same email string.

MasterAM

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