MongoDB - Dynamically update an object in nested array - json

Question

I have a document like this:
{
Name : val
AnArray : [
{
Time : SomeTime
},
{
Time : AnotherTime
}
...arbitrary more elements
}
I need to update "Time" to a Date type (right now it is string)
I would like to do something psudo like:
foreach record in document.AnArray { record.Time = new Date(record.Time) }
I've read the documentation on $ and "dot" notation as well as a several similar questions here, I tried this code:
db.collection.update({_id:doc._id},{$set : {AnArray.$.Time : new Date(AnArray.$.Time)}});
And hoping that $ would iterate the indexes of the "AnArray" property as I don't know for each record the length of it. But am getting the error:
SyntaxError: missing : after property id (shell):1
How can I perform an update on each member of the arrays nested values with a dynamic value?

Answer 1

There's no direct way to do that, because MongoDB doesn't support an update-expression that references the document. Moreover, the $ operator only applies to the first match, so you'd have to perform this as long as there are still fields where AnArray.Time is of $type string.
You can, however, perform that update client side, in your favorite language or in the mongo console using JavaScript:
db.collection.find({}).forEach(function (doc) {
for(var i in doc.AnArray)
{
doc.AnArray[i].Time = new Date(doc.AnArray[i].Time);
}
db.outcollection.save(doc);
})
Note that this will store the migrated data in a different collection. You can also update the collection in-place by replacing outcollection with collection.