I am trying to create a mongodb design to support a chat application. The system needs to write the message to a collection with a status of delivered (boolean) and read (boolean).
1 message would be able to be sent to more than 1 person.
Anybody know of a good schema for this type of thing in the mongodb schemaless design?
I was thinking of have a array inside the collection that would contain another document that would have 3 properties.. "name of person addressed to", "read (boolean)" and "delivered (boolean)".
This way at runtime I can reach into the db using dot notation to find all messages addressed to a specific person, all unread messages, all undelivered messsages etc.
I think I need to have another property too "name of person sent from", so i am able to rebuild the a list of messages sent and there status
Has anyone seen a good setup for this ?
Am I thinking this correctly or is there a better way of achieving such a solution
If I understand correctly, you want to keep track of the status of a message. A message is sent by one person, but can be received by many. The status of the message depends on which recipient we're talking about - Joe may have read the message from Tim, while Sally has it in her inbox but hasn't read it, and Joan hasn't received it yet. Based on your rough requirements I would model this with a message_status collection where each document represents the status of one message with respect to one recipient:
{
"message_id" : ObjectId(...) // some unique identifier or reference for the message
"sender" : { "name" : "Tim", "ref" : ObjectId(...) }
"recipient" : { "name" : "Sally", "ref" : ObjectId(...) }
"status" : { "delivered" : true, "read" : false }
}
I'm unclear on to what extent I need to use references versus just embedding in the names because your full use case isn't specified. Getting the kinds of information you mentioned is pretty easy:
all messages addressed to a specific person
db.message_status.find({ "recipient" : ObjectId(...) })
all unread messages [sent to a specific person?]
db.message_status.find({ "recipient" : ObjectId(...), "status.read" : false })
all undelivered messsages [sent to a specific person?]
db.message_status.find({ "recipient" : ObjectId(...), "status.delivered" : false })
rebuild the a list of messages sent and there status
db.message_status.find({ "sender" : ObjectId(...) })