We need some better documentation please

[elfeffe]

This is not a bug in the code (I hope) but is a problem with the documentation.
I find how to get collections and then do a var_dump, but I can't find any place that helps me to get some field on that object.
I have tried every single way to do this, and it seems that find or findOne doesn't work. Documentation is not good enough and that's very bad for MongoDB, we just can't advance in our projects.

I have this document

{ 
    "_id" : ObjectId("56a22142bd1457041e2c94b2"), 
    "anonymousId" : "7f668198-e985-426e-9232-084c440f7293", 
    "channel" : "client", 
    "context" : {
        "ip" : "1.175.1.14", 
        "library" : {
            "name" : "analytics.js", 
            "version" : "2.11.1"
        }, 
        "page" : {
            "path" : "/", 
            "referrer" : "http://www.google.com/", 
            "search" : "", 
            "title" : "Title", 
            "url" : "http://www.google.com"
        }, 
        "userAgent" : "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0"
    }, 
    "integrations" : {

    }, 
    "messageId" : "ajs-492650bab68cd4305f8a56a769299ea6", 
    "originalTimestamp" : "2016-01-22T12:32:10.657Z", 
    "projectId" : "V7vqDI8qKo", 
    "receivedAt" : "2016-01-22T12:32:01.832Z", 
    "sentAt" : "2016-01-22T12:32:10.657Z", 
    "timestamp" : "2016-01-22T12:32:01.832Z", 
    "type" : "identify", 
    "userId" : "user@gmail.com", 
    "version" : NumberInt(2)
}

Can somebody tell me how to get userId from that document in PHP?
Also I have noticed that find and findOne returns different objects, different data.
Can somebody tell me how to get userId from one result and from a collection in a foreach?

This is a silly question, but I can't find any documentation that says that. All the examples are for the old driver (mongo, not mongodb), but not for this.
Thank you

[elfeffe]

I found https://github.com/mongolab/mongodb-driver-examples/blob/master/php/php_simple_example.php
Which helps, but sort doesn't work.

There is no documentation over the whole Internet

[elfeffe]

To collaborate with the documentation:
This is how options (sort, limit) works
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35147845/how-does-sorting-work-in-the-new-mongodb-pecl-extension

It took more than 2 days to find the way. I hope it helps someone.

[jacqueswaller]

I've run into the same problems where my old method of "just type what I want to do into Google" always explains how to do it with the old driver.

I have found the API to be useful though: http://mongodb.github.io/mongo-php-library/api/namespace-MongoDB.html

In particular the Client and Collection classes. There's no plainly written examples but having written a lot of code with the old driver I was able to figure stuff out. So yes, as you've noticed find and findOne return different results (this was true with the old driver as well). From the documentation, findOne returns an object or null. find returns a MongoDB\Driver\Cursor. The php library is just a wrapper around the low-level MongoDB driver, so for more information on the driver classes (like MongoDB\Driver\Cursor) you'll want to go here http://php.net/manual/en/set.mongodb.php

[elfeffe]

Thank you @jacqueswaller

[p-golovin]

I have a problem with deserialisation.

Create client with typemap option:

new \MongoDB\Client("mongodb://".implode(",", $config['server']), $opts, ['typeMap' => ['root' => 'array', 'document' => 'array', 'array' => 'array']]);

But

                $mongo_list = $log_collection->distinct("context.user");
                var_dump($mongo_list);

returns me array of objects:

array (size=193)
  0 => 
    object(stdClass)[48]
      public 'login' => string '...' (length=4)
  1 => 
    object(stdClass)[50]
      public 'id' => int 527
      public 'name' => string '...' (length=25)
      public 'login' => string '...' (length=4)

[jacqueswaller]

I don't have the driver installed atm to test so I can't say for sure, but looking at the API I think that
Distinct::execute could stand to have

if (isset($this->options['typeMap'])) {
    $cursor->setTypeMap($this->options['typeMap']);
}

the same way that Find::execute does.

[jmikola]

@elfeffe: Glad you got this sorted out. The prose-style documentation still needs a bit of love, so the API documentation that @jacqueswaller suggested is definitely worth looking at. As a general rule, most of the Collection and Database methods use an Operation class, where we've documented all of the options in the constructor. Of course, I still need to port that over to the prose documentation, since users shouldn't be expected to poke around generated API docs for such basic info.

---

@p-golovin: We can't support a typeMap option for command helpers until PHPC-314 is implemented. The reason being is that type maps are currently limited to root and embedded documents, and since the non-cursor commands (e.g. distinct, findAndModify) return results within a sub-field (e.g. a results array of objects), we have no way to tell the driver to apply the type map starting with those results, which is undoubtedly what users would expect. The PHPLIB tracking ticket for this is PHPLIB-112.

In the future, please open a new issue unless your question is identical to the OP. That will ensure we don't lose track of things and make it easier for other folks to follow conversation or dig up the question/answer down the line.