Limiting results in MongoDB but still getting the full count?

Question

For speed, I\'d like to limit a query to 10 results

db.collection.find( ... ).limit(10)

However, I\'d also like to know the total count, so

Answer 1

There is a solution using push and slice: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39784851/4752635

I prefe

1. First for filtering and then grouping by ID to get number of filtered elements. Do not filter here, it is unnecessary.
2. Second query which filters, sorts and paginates.

Solution with pushing $$ROOT and using $slice runs into document memory limitation of 16MB for large collections. Also, for large collections two queries together seem to run faster than the one with $$ROOT pushing. You can run them in parallel as well, so you are limited only by the slower of the two queries (probably the one which sorts).

I have settled with this solution using 2 queries and aggregation framework (note - I use node.js in this example, but idea is the same):

var aggregation = [
  {
    // If you can match fields at the begining, match as many as early as possible.
    $match: {...}
  },
  {
    // Projection.
    $project: {...}
  },
  {
    // Some things you can match only after projection or grouping, so do it now.
    $match: {...}
  }
];


// Copy filtering elements from the pipeline - this is the same for both counting number of fileter elements and for pagination queries.
var aggregationPaginated = aggregation.slice(0);

// Count filtered elements.
aggregation.push(
  {
    $group: {
      _id: null,
      count: { $sum: 1 }
    }
  }
);

// Sort in pagination query.
aggregationPaginated.push(
  {
    $sort: sorting
  }
);

// Paginate.
aggregationPaginated.push(
  {
    $limit: skip + length
  },
  {
    $skip: skip
  }
);

// I use mongoose.

// Get total count.
model.count(function(errCount, totalCount) {
  // Count filtered.
  model.aggregate(aggregation)
  .allowDiskUse(true)
  .exec(
  function(errFind, documents) {
    if (errFind) {
      // Errors.
      res.status(503);
      return res.json({
        'success': false,
        'response': 'err_counting'
      });
    }
    else {
      // Number of filtered elements.
      var numFiltered = documents[0].count;

      // Filter, sort and pagiante.
      model.request.aggregate(aggregationPaginated)
      .allowDiskUse(true)
      .exec(
        function(errFindP, documentsP) {
          if (errFindP) {
            // Errors.
            res.status(503);
            return res.json({
              'success': false,
              'response': 'err_pagination'
            });
          }
          else {
            return res.json({
              'success': true,
              'recordsTotal': totalCount,
              'recordsFiltered': numFiltered,
              'response': documentsP
            });
          }
      });
    }
  });
});