Update a subdocument contained in an array contained in a MongoDB document

Question

Documents.update(
  {_id: Session.get("current_document_id")}, 
  {$push: {schema: {type: "text", size: size, name: name, label: label}}}
);

The above query is a Meteor collection, and 'Documents.update' maps to 'db.documents.update' in MongoDB documentation (http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/applications/update/). With that query I can add a schema document inside the main document. Subdocuments are stored in an array:

Document:
  schema:
    array:
      {type: "text", size: 6, name: "first_name", label: "First name"},
      {type: "text", size: 6, name: "last_name", label: "Last name"}

I want to modify the name and size attributes of the subdocuments with this query:

Documents.update(
  {_id: Session.get("current_document_id"), 'schema' : "first_name"}, 
  {$push: {schema: {type: "text", size: 7, name: name, label: "First Name2"}}}
);

But that operation append a new object directly under schema and deletes the array:

Document:
  schema:
      {type: "text", size: 7, name: "first_name", label: "First Name2"}

How can I modify the query to change the attributes avoiding this issue? After the query I would like to have this document:

Document:
  schema:
    array:
      {type: "text", size: 7, name: "first_name", label: "First name2"},
      {type: "text", size: 6, name: "last_name", label: "Last name"}

Answer 1

You can use arrayFilters with positional $[] operator

The example below from official mongodb documentation uses "elem" as the positional identifier

---

Consider a collection students2 with the following documents:

{
   "_id" : 1,
   "grades" : [
      { "grade" : 80, "mean" : 75, "std" : 6 },
      { "grade" : 85, "mean" : 90, "std" : 4 },
      { "grade" : 85, "mean" : 85, "std" : 6 }
   ]
}
{
   "_id" : 2,
   "grades" : [
      { "grade" : 90, "mean" : 75, "std" : 6 },
      { "grade" : 87, "mean" : 90, "std" : 3 },
      { "grade" : 85, "mean" : 85, "std" : 4 }
   ]
}

To modify the value of the mean field for all elements in the grades array where the grade is greater than or equal to 85, use the positional $[] operator and arrayFilters:

db.students2.update(
   { },
   { $set: { "grades.$[elem].mean" : 100 } },
   {
     multi: true,
     arrayFilters: [ { "elem.grade": { $gte: 85 } } ]
   }
)