Mongoose save subdocument array

This is something i faced a few days ago on 22nd june 2015. here is the link to the issue i raised on github https://github.com/Automattic/mongoose/issues/3093.

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Now there are two solutions to your problem.

1. use .set() explicitly whenever you're modifying an array index

for example:

doc.someArray.set('3', 'changed');
doc.save();

here the array named someArray is being changed and thus we need to change it using array.set method.

Drawback: each single elementy of the array need to be set using array.set(), so for example, 5 elements inside array change you will need to set all of them using array.set.

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2. Mark the array as modified and then save it.

for example:

doc.array[3] = 'changed';
doc.markModified('array');

This is another way, when you can not explicitly call the array.set method. for example: in my case i used loadash to merge the document and saved it, there was no way i could use array.set, thus i used array.markModified.

Benifit: You will not need to set each of your element inside array as the above array.set method.

Drawback:

In case of each array you will ned to mark it as modified before saving. for example: if you have 10 arrays in your document, you will need to mark them all as modified before saving: like,

 doc.markModified('array1');
 doc.markModified('array2');
 doc.markModified('array3');

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There is still no option in mongoose to mark multiple arrays as modified. I have requested this feature in the link i have shared above.

So that would be something like:

profile.markAllModified(['arrayFirst','arraySecond','arrayThird','arrayFourth']);

which has been added to milestone 4.0.7 of mongoose, hope we see this feature soon.

So I had assumed that Mongoose would save sub documents so long as they had the _id field - but apparently not. The solution to saving sub-document arrays is to

1. Create a new Model object for each sub-document in the array from the json
2. Call save() on each object
3. The parent object doesn't care if the _id of the sub-document exists or not - it can just store it before I even save the sub-document itself in the database.

Again the fix was just calling .save() on the sub-document.

var content = new Content(c); content.save(); h.content[y] = content;

exports.putdaycontent = function (req, res) {

var dayId = req.params.dayId;
var headings = req.body.headings;
var day = req.body;

var updateDay = function () {
    Day.update({
        _id: dayId
    }, day, {
        new: true,
        upsert: true
    }, function (err, day) {
        if (err)
            error.databaseError(req, res, err);

        res.send(day);
    });
};

if (headings) {
    for (var x = 0; x < headings.length; x++) {
        var h = headings[x];

        if (h.content) {
            for (var y = 0; y < h.content.length; y++) {
                var c = h.content[y];

                //If existing content update it
                if (c._id && c._id.length > 0) {
                    Content.update({
                        _id: c._id
                    }, c, {
                        new: true,
                        upsert: true
                    }, function (err, content) {

                    });
                } else {
                    var content = new Content(c);
                    content.save();
                    h.content[y] = content;
                }

            }
        }
    }
    day.headings = headings;
    updateDay();

} else {
    updateDay();
}


 };