mongodb pointer to another collection's item

Question

Is it possible to point from one collection's item's value to another collection's item?

example:

db.col2.save( { value: 'test' } );
db.col1.save( { title: 'testing, something: [code to point to another collection's item] } );

db.col1.find().toArray()

[
        {
                "_id" : ObjectId([someobjectidhere]),
                "title" : "testing",
                "something": {
                        "value": "test"
                }
        }
]

Answer 1

Yes you can point to another document, however unlike SQL you can't do a join to retrieve both at the same time. Therefore you would need to do 2 retrieves. One to get the first document (then extract the reference in code) and then use this reference to get the second document

Answer 2

MongoDB does not support joins. In MongoDB some data is “denormalized,” or stored with related data in documents to remove the need for joins. However, in some cases it makes sense to store related information in separate documents, typically in different collections or databases.

You can refer the doc for DBRef here