Question

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?

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.