Document set containing document with DocumentSet

[tholder]

This may not be a bug but something is up with it.

If you have a document structured like:

company --->categories [DocumentSet] --------->category ---------------->access [DocumentSet] ----------------------->access

You can't do this:

$c = $company->categories->new(); $c->name = 'My Cat'; $c->save();

$a = $c->access->new(); $a->hasAccess = true; $a->save();

When calling second save I get:

MongoCursorException: can't append to array using string field name [access] in on line 948

It's not clear the correct order in which to be saving things. I have, accidentally, managed to get it saving correctly once but I've just lost the correct combination. Will add it when I find it.

[tholder]

I think I've found that it has to be done as follows:

$c = $company->categories->new(); $c->name = 'My Cat'; $company->categories->addDocument($c); $company->categories->save();

$a = $c->access->new(); $a->hasAccess = true; $c->access->addDocument($a); $c->access->save();

This doesn't seem very intuitive imho, either that or I've been in the land of document databases too long today! I'll add something to the wiki if that's ok.

[coen-hyde]

Yeah, working with document databases expecting relational functionality is going to end messy. Shanty Mongo to some degree elevates the gap but it only gets so far. There are two issues you've run into.

1. At the moment it's impossible to update an array element in a nested array https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-831

Your work around works because you're saving the entire array inside an array not an array element in a nested array.

1. When you do:

   $c = $company->categories->new(); $c->name = 'My Cat'; $c->save();

$c gets pushed into categories on the db end. So unfortunately we then have an incomplete path to $c (we do not know its index). This means you wont be able to save its self or children anymore. A work around is to do:

$c = $company->categories->new(); $c->name = 'My Cat'; $company->categories->addDocument($c); $company->categories->save();

as you figured out but the problem with this in high concurrent connections is you run the possibility of overriding categories with stale data because you're saving the entire categories array.