How do I count all the documents in a collection and use the cont in a controller, with MongoDB and Express.js?

Question

I am working on a blogging application (click the link to see the GitHub repo) with Express (version 4.17.1), EJS and MongoDB (version 4.0.10).

Trying to paginate the posts I did the following, in the controller:

exports.getPosts = (req, res, next) => {

    const perPage = 5;

    const currPage = req.query.page ? parseInt(req.query.page) : 1;

    let postsCount = 0;

    const posts = Post.find({}, (err, posts) => {

            postsCount = posts.length;

            let pageDecrement = currPage > 1 ? 1 : 0;

            let pageIncrement = postsCount >= perPage ? 1 : 0;

            if (err) {
                console.log('Error: ', err);
            } else {
                res.render('default/index', {
                    moment: moment,
                    layout: 'default/layout',
                    website_name: 'MEAN Blog',
                    page_heading: 'XPress News',
                    page_subheading: 'A MEAN Stack Blogging Application',
                    currPage: currPage,
                    posts: posts,
                    pageDecrement: pageDecrement,
                    pageIncrement: pageIncrement
                });
            }
        })
        .sort({
            created_at: -1
        })
        .populate('category')
        .limit(perPage)
        .skip((currPage - 1) * perPage);
};

And in the view:

<a class="btn btn-primary <%= pageDecrement == 0 ? 'disabled' : '' %>" href="/?page=<%= currPage - pageDecrement %>">&larr; Newer Posts</a>

and

<a class="btn btn-primary <%= pageIncrement == 0 ? 'disabled' : '' %>" href="/?page=<%= currPage + pageIncrement %>">Older Posts &rarr;</a>

That works fine unless there are is a number of posts equal to perPage x N, where N is an integer, in which case the "Older Posts" button becomes disabled one page too late.

That is because postsCount = posts.length counts the posts after they are limited by .skip((currPage - 1) * perPage).

So I need to count the posts from the model/collection and bring that count variable in the controller.

My model:

const mongoose = require('mongoose');

const postSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    title: {
        type: String,
        required: true
    },
    short_description: {
        type: String,
        required: true
    },
    full_text: {
        type: String,
        required: true
    },
    category: {
        type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId,
        ref: 'Category'
    },
    post_image: {
        type: String,
        required: false
    },
    updated_at: {
        type: Date,
        default: Date.now()
    },
    created_at: {
        type: Date,
        default: Date.now()
    }
});

module.exports = mongoose.model('Post', postSchema);

How do I count all the documents in the posts collection and use that number in the posts controller?

Answer 1

This can be done easier with mongodb aggregation framework.

We use $facet aggregation to get the paginated data along with the total number of documents.

In aggregation framework we use $lookup instead of mongoose populate. $lookup returns an array, to get the first item in array we use $arrayElemAt operator inside $addFields.

Playground

And here is the code to apply to your app: (The first $match aggregation is unnecessary here, but I put in in case you may need it in the future)

exports.getPosts = async (req, res, next) => {
    const perPage = 5;
    const currPage = req.query.page ? parseInt(req.query.page) : 1;
    const skip = (currPage - 1) * perPage;

    try {
        const result = await Post.aggregate([{
                $match: {},
            },
            {
                $sort: {
                    created_at: -1,
                },
            },
            {
                $lookup: {
                    from: "categories",
                    localField: "category",
                    foreignField: "_id",
                    as: "category",
                },
            },
            {
                $addFields: {
                    category: {
                        $arrayElemAt: ["$category", 0],
                    },
                },
            },
            {
                $facet: {
                    totalRecords: [{
                        $count: "total",
                    }, ],
                    data: [{
                            $skip: skip,
                        },
                        {
                            $limit: perPage,
                        },
                    ],
                },
            },
        ]);

        let postsCount = result[0].totalRecords[0].total;
        const pageCount = Math.ceil(postsCount / perPage);
        const pageDecrement = currPage > 1 ? 1 : 0;
        const pageIncrement = currPage < pageCount ? 1 : 0;
        const posts = result[0].data;

        res.render("default/index", {
            moment: moment,
            layout: "default/layout",
            website_name: "MEAN Blog",
            page_heading: "XPress News",
            page_subheading: "A MEAN Stack Blogging Application",
            currPage,
            posts,
            pageDecrement,
            pageIncrement,
        });
    } catch (err) {
        console.log("Error: ", err);
        res.status(500).send("something went wrong");
    }
};

By the way, in the post schema, for date fields you use default: Date.now(), this will cause the date value always the same value, it should be in this format: default: Date.now