MongoDB nested object aggregation counting

Question

I have a highly nested mongoDB set of objects and I want to count the number of subdocuments that match a given condition Edit: (in each document). For example

Answer 1

You need to process $unwind when working with arrays, and you need to do this three times:

 db.collection.aggregate([

     // Un-wind the array's to access filtering 
     { "$unwind": "$studies" },
     { "$unwind": "$studies.samples" },
     { "$unwind": "$studies.samples.formdata" },

     // Group results to obtain the matched count per key
     { "$group": {
         "_id": "$studies.samples.formdata.GT",
         "count": { "$sum": 1 }
     }}
 ])

Ideally you want to filter your input. Possibly do this with a $match both before and after $unwind is processed and using a $regex to match documents where the data at point begins with a "1".

 db.collection.aggregate([

     // Match first to exclude documents where this is not present in any array member
     { "$match": { "studies.samples.formdata.GT": /^1/ } },

     // Un-wind the array's to access filtering 
     { "$unwind": "$studies" },
     { "$unwind": "$studies.samples" },
     { "$unwind": "$studies.samples.formdata" },

     // Match to filter
     { "$match": { "studies.samples.formdata.GT": /^1/ } },

     // Group results to obtain the matched count per key
     { "$group": {
         "_id": {
              "_id": "$_id",
              "key": "$studies.samples.formdata.GT"
         },
         "count": { "$sum": 1 }
     }}
 ])

Note that in all cases the "dollar $" prefixed entries are the "variables" referring to properties of the document. These are "values" to use an input on the right side. The left side "keys" must be specified as a plain string key. No variable can be used to name a key.