MongoDB best practice for referencing

Question

I'm wondering what the best practice for modelling by using references would be given situation under. I'm using MongoRepository library.

public class User : Entity {    publis string Id { get; set; }    public string Email { get; set; }    public string Password { get; set; } }  public class Post : Entity {    public string Id { get; set; }    public string Title { get; set; }    public string Summary { get; set; }    public DateTime Added { get; set; }    public User Owner { get; set; } } 

When storing the Post I want only reference to Owner (User) object instead of whole object underlying.

Currently I'm doing it like this, not knowing of better way...

var post = new Post {    Title = "Example title",    Summary = "asd asd",    Added = DateTime.Now,    Owner = new User { Id = "someExistingUserId" } }; postRepository.Update(post); //Save 

..

//Then to get the post var post = postRepository.GetById("previouslySavedPostId"); post.Owner = userRepository.GetById(post.Owner.Id); return post; 

userRepository and postRepository are of MongoRepository type.

Is this the correct approach to solving my problem using MongoDB with C#/MVC(4)?

Answer 1

You can use MongoDBRef object instead of User object.

public class Post : Entity {     public string Id { get; set; }     public string Title { get; set; }     public string Summary { get; set; }     public DateTime Added { get; set; }     public MongoDBRef Owner { get; set; } }     

Then you can:

var mongo = new Mongo(config.BuildConfiguration()); mongo.Connect();         var DB = mongo.GetDatabase(_dataBaseName)  var post = new Post(); post.Owner = new MongoDBRef("User", userId); // First parameter is a mongoDB collection name and second is object id // To fetch object referenced by DBRef you should do following var owner = DB.FollowReference<User>(post.Owner);