How do I make a mongoose schema with a set of more than one type?

Question

How do I make a mongoose schema with a set of more than one type?

So I have a schema with people and groups. I want to make it possible for a person to be related to one or more people or groups. So far I have this:

var PersonSchema = new Schema({
    name    : String,
});
var PersonModel = mongoose.model('Person', PersonSchema);

var GroupSchema = new Schema({
    name    : String,
    members : [PersonSchema]
});
var GroupModel = mongoose.model('Group', GroupSchema);

How to add to PersonSchema a set of one or more groups and/or other people?

javascript
node.js
mongodb
mongoose

Answer 1

Assuming you have both Persons and Groups collections in your database based on this, you could add arrays of ObjectId refs to PersonSchema to capture a person's relationships with other people or groups. As in:

var PersonSchema = new Schema({
    name    : String,
    people: [{ type: Schema.ObjectId, ref: 'Person' }],
    groups: [{ type: Schema.ObjectId, ref: 'Group' }]
});

Then you can use mongoose's populate support to follow those refs whenever you need their full details.

Answer 2

You can define like:

var Relation = new mongoose.Schema({
RelationType:String, RefObjId: String //You can also take Schema.ObjectId 
});

var PersonObj = new mongoose.Schema({
name: String,
OtherDetails: String,
RefObjDetails:[Relation]
});

Example:

A (_id:100) Person is related to B (_id:200) Person and to group MyGroup (_id:333).

JSON will look like:

{
 '_id':'100',
 'name': 'A',
 'OtherDetails': '',
 'RefObjDetails':[{'RelationType':'P', RefObjId:'200'},{'RelationType':'G', RefObjId:'333'}]
}