Question

I am wondering what is the best layout for a “customer service” document in MongoDB. I thought something like this, but not sure.

{
"userid":(MONGODBUSERID),
"subject":"subjectofissue",
"issue":"issue that the user has",
"replies":[{
   "whoreplied":"staff/customer",
   "uid":"userid of replier",
   "msg":"msg of reply"
}]
}

Is that the best way to do it? If so how would I update the replies array with PHP? I need to insert into the replies array without overwriting past replies.

I tied this but got the following error

Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘MongoException’ with message ‘zero-length keys are not allowed, did you use $ with double quotes?’ in /home/MYSITE/public_html/core.php:347
Stack trace:

my code

$array = array(
    "$push" => array(
        "replies" => array(
            "whoreplied" => "user",
            "uid" => new MongoId($this->data['uid']), 
            "msg" => $this->data['issue']
        )
     )
);

$collection->update(array(
    "_id" => new MongoId($this->data['customerID'])
), $array);

Answer 1

You need to surround the $push command on line 2 with single quotes (') instead of double quotes ('").

$array = array(
    '$push' => array(
        "replies" => array(
            "whoreplied" => "user",
            "uid" => new MongoId($this->data['uid']), 
            "msg" => $this->data['issue']
        )
     )
);

Double quotes will cause PHP to treat $push as a variable and attempt to replace it with the variable’s value.