Using mongodb, how can I remove an object from an array based on one of its properties?

Question

I have a mongodb collection containing an array of objects, and I'd like to remove one or more of the array objects based on their properties.

Example document from my collection:

nickname: "Bob",
isLibrarian: false,
region: "South America",
favoriteBooks: [
    {
        title: "Treasure Island",
        author: "Robert Louis Stevenson"
    },
    {
        title: "The Great Gatsby",
        author: "F. Scott Fitzgerald"
    },
    {
        title: "Kidnapped",
        author: "Robert Louis Stevenson"
    }
]

In this example, how do I remove, from each of the documents in my collection, all objects within the favoriteBook array whose author matches "Robert Louis Stevenson"?

So that afterwards this user document would be

nickname: "Bob",
isLibrarian: false,
region: "South America",
favoriteBooks: [
    {
        title: "The Great Gatsby",
        author: "F. Scott Fitzgerald"
    }
]

and other documents in the collection would be equally trimmed of books by Stevenson.

Thank you in advance for any insight! I love MongoDB but I'm wondering if I've bitten off more than I can chew here...

Asya Kamsky · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-04 08:04:59Z

2

The below line of mongodb will help you to delete the books that matches a particular author

db.collection.update(
   {},
   {$pull:{favoriteBooks:{author:"Robert Louis Stevenson"}}},
   {multi:true}
);

edited Mar 4, 2013 at 8:04

Asya Kamsky

42.4k5 gold badges113 silver badges133 bronze badges

answered Mar 4, 2013 at 4:56

kishore

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3 Comments

Asya Kamsky Over a year ago

added multi:true since OP specified this should be done to all documents in the collection, also formatted the code.

Neko Jiru Over a year ago

Doesn't seem to work. The book objects remain within the favoriteBooks array.

Neko Jiru Over a year ago

Oops, it does work after all! At least in this contrived example. Now to figure out why it doesn't work with my more complex collection (constructed using the same structure). Thanks!

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