maximum:computed-fields

Meteor package for automatic computation of field values in a collection

What it does

Let's think you have two collections, authors and posts. Posts have one author. You want to display the number of posts an author has written on the author's page. Normally in Meteor you would publish the posts for an author and do a Posts.find({authorId: '...'}).count(). But if an author has written a large number of posts, it can be slow. At this point, it's better to use computed fields instead of doing the computation on-the-fly. What if you have a field called postCount in the authors collection that holds the number of posts of an author and updates itself automatically? With this package, you can achieve this with one line of code:

  var Posts = new Mongo.Collection('posts');
  var Authors = new Mongo.Collection('authors');

  // on server side
  Authors.computedFields.add('postCount').count(Posts, 'authorId');

Installation

    meteor add maximum:computed-fields

Usage

You can add an computed field with *collection*.computedFields.add(name, [calculation]) (on serverside only). The first parameter name specify how the field should be named. It's possible to specify sub-objects with . (e.g. subobject.commentsCount) The second parameter is optional and specifies a function with the basic computation. It will be executed on insert, update and remove of documents in the specified collection. It gets the affected document as the first parameter.

  Posts.computedFields.add('commentsCount'); // returns a ComputedField instance

  Posts.computedFields.add('updateCount', function(post){
    /*  
      content of `this`:
      * isUpdate (boolean)
      * isInsert (boolean)
      * isRemove (boolean)
      * previous (object)
      * userId: (string)
      * fieldNames ([string])
      * computedField: (string)
      * set (function)
      * unset (function)
    */
    this.set(newValue); // use `set` to update the field
    this.unset(); // use `unset` to unset the field
  });

It's also possible to get a computed field, after it was created

  Posts.computedFields.get('commentsCount'); // returns the ComputedField instance

ComputedField

Method	Description
addDependency(collection, options)	Does a computation depending on a other collection. This method takes the other collection as the first parameter and an options-object as the second one: findId(relatedDoc): Function to get the relation between the two collections. Must return an _id of the collection, in which the computed field is. Return an array of _ids, if you want to update multiple documents. update(currentDoc, relatedDoc): Function to update the computed field. See above for the value of this updateOnPrevious: Boolean (default: true) that specifies if the update method is called on documents, returned by the findId function called with the previous document.
simple(collection, referenceFieldName, update)	Does a computation depending on a other collection (a simpler approach). It takes the following parameters: collection: the other collection referenceFieldName: the name of the field which contains the _id of the document (e.g. authorId). update(currentDoc, relatedDoc): function to update the computed field. Must return the new value for the computed field. See above for the value of this. For this function, this will be extended with the increment property. this.increment contains 1 if an related document was added and -1 if a related document was removed.
increment(collection, referenceFieldName, update)	Same like simple, but the return value of the update function will be added to the current value instead of overwriting it.
count(collection, referenceFieldName)	The simplest approach. Specially for count properties. Works internally with increment and returns this.increment
rebuild()	Rebuilds the computed field. Useful for migrations.

Examples

Normal computation

This is the easiest type of automatic computations. It doesn't depend on other collections.

  //increments the field 'updateCount' every time the document gets updated (or inserted)
  Posts.computedFields.add('updateCount', function(post){
    current = post.updateCount or 0
    this.set(current + 1);
  });

Computations from other collections

As you've already read above, there are three ways to do computations depending on other collections.

addDependency

This is the most flexible approach. Here's an example how a computed postCount property could be achieved with addDependency.

  Authors.computedFields.add('postCount').addDependency(Posts, {
    findId: function(post) {
      return post.authorId;
    },
    update: function(author, post) {
      var currentValue = author.postCount or 0;
      if(this.isInsert || this.previous.authorId != author._id) {
        this.set(currentValue + 1);
      } else if(this.isRemove || (this.previous.authorId == author._id && post.authorId != author._id)) {
        this.set(currentValue - 1);
      }
    }
  });

simple

This approach is much simpler. Here's an example how a computed postCount property could be achieved with simple.

  Authors.computedFields.add('postCount').simple(Posts, 'authorId', function(author, post) {
    var currentValue = author.postCount or 0;
    return currentValue + this.increment;
  });

increment

Like simple, but designed for incrementations/decrementations.. Here's an example how a computed postCount property could be achieved with increment.

  Authors.computedFields.add('postCount').increment(Posts, 'authorId', function(author, post) {
    return this.increment;
  });

count

The simplest approach, designed for count properties. Here's an example how a computed postCount property could be achieved with count.

  Authors.computedFields.add('postCount').count(Posts, 'authorId');

Support for aldeed:collection2 package

You can define computed fields directly in your collection schema

  Authors.attachSchema({
    name: {
      type: String
    },
    updateCount: { // normal computation
      type: Number,
      optional: true,
      compute: function(post) {
        current = post.updateCount or 0
        this.set(current + 1);
      }
    },

    postCount: { // with dependency
      type: Number,
      optional: true,
      compute: {
        dependency: {
          collection: Posts,
          findId: function(post){
            // ...
          },
          update: function(author, post){
            // ...
          }
        }
      }
    },

    postCount: { // with simple
      type: Number,
      optional: true,
      compute: {
        simple: {
          collection: Posts,
          referenceFieldName: 'authorId'
          update: function(author){
            // ...
          }
        }
      }
    },

    postCount: { // with increment
      type: Number,
      optional: true,
      compute: {
        increment: {
          collection: Posts,
          referenceFieldName: 'authorId'
          update: function(author){
            // ...
          }
        }
      }
    },

    postCount: { // with count
      type: Number,
      optional: true,
      compute: {
        count: {
          collection: Posts,
          referenceFieldName: 'authorId'
        }
      }
    },
  });

License

Licensed under MIT license. Copyright (c) 2015 Max Nowack

Contributions

Contributions are welcome. Please open issues and/or file Pull Requests.

Maintainers

• Max Nowack (maxnowack)