Embedded document vs reference in mongoose design model?

Question

Let\'s say I am building a discussion forum using Node.js, and mongoose. A user can have multiple forums, and a forum can have multiple comments. A user can also invite othe

Answer 1

Personally I like to do references in situations like yours. In this way I can get a comment from a user, a user from a forum, a forum from a comment, a forum from a user, etc. without worrying about doing complicated embedded document queries. I don't even bother storing embedded reference documents. If there is a one to many relationship between a forum and comments then I would store a forum reference on the comment and no comment reference on the forum because when you add/remove comments from the comments collection you then also have to go remove the embedded reference document from the comments collection on the forum.

I can query for a forum from a comment using the forum reference and I can get all comments for a forum by querying the comments collection for that forum reference (which is just an ID number until mongoose populates it behind the scenes for you).