Which is the efficient way of updating an element in MongoDB? - arrays

Question

I have a collection like below
{
"doc_id": "1234",
"items": [
{
"item_no": 1,
"item": "car",
},
{
"item_no": 2,
"item": "bus",
},
{
"item_no": 3,
"item": "truck",
}
]
},
I need to update an element inside items list based on a search criteria. My search criteria is, if "item_no" is 3, "item" should be updated to "aeroplane".
I have written the following two approaches in Python to solve this.
Approach 1:
cursor = list(collection.find({"doc_id": 1234}))
for doc in cursor:
if "items" in doc:
temp = deepcopy(doc["items"])
for element in doc["items"]:
if ("item_no" and "item") in element:
if element["item_no"] == 3:
temp[temp.index(element)]["item"] = "aeroplane"
collection.update_one({"doc_id": 1234},
{"$set": {"items": temp}})
Approach 2:
cursor = list(collection.find({"doc_id": 1234}))
for doc in cursor:
if "items" in doc:
collection.find_one_and_update({"doc_id": 1234}, {'$set': {'items.$[elem]': {"item_no": 3, "item": "aeroplane"}}}, array_filters=[{'elem.item_no': {"$eq": 3}}])
Among the above two approaches, which one is better in terms of time complexity?

Answer 1

Use only a query and avoid loops:
db.collection.update({
"doc_id": "1234",
"items.item_no": 3
},
{
"$set": {
"items.$.item": "aeroplane"
}
})
Example here
Note how using "items.item_no": 3 into the find stage you can use $ into update stage to refer the object into the array.
So, doing
{
"doc_id": "1234",
"items.item_no": 3
}
When you use $ you are telling mongo: "Ok, do your action in the object where the condition is match" (i.e., the object in the collection with doc_id: "1234" and an array with items.item_no: 3)
Also if you want to update more than one document you can use multi:true like this example.
Edit: It seems you are using pymongo so you can use multi=True (insted of multi: true) or a cleaner way, using update_many.
collection.update_many( /* your query here */ )