[mongodb] MongoDB: How to find out if an array field contains an element?

I have two collections. The first collection contains students:

{ "_id" : ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015cf"), "name" : "John" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0"), "name" : "Sam" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d1"), "name" : "Chris" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d2"), "name" : "Joe" }

The second collection contains courses:

{
        "_id" : ObjectId("51780fb5c9c41825e3e21fc4"),
        "name" : "CS 101",
        "students" : [
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015cf"),
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0"),
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d2")
        ]
}
{
        "_id" : ObjectId("51780fb5c9c41825e3e21fc5"),
        "name" : "Literature",
        "students" : [
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0"),
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0"),
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d2")
        ]
}
{
        "_id" : ObjectId("51780fb5c9c41825e3e21fc6"),
        "name" : "Physics",
        "students" : [
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015cf"),
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0")
        ]
}

Each course document contains students array which has a list of students registered for the course. When a student views a course on a web page he needs to see if he has already registered for the course or not. In order to do that, when the courses collection gets queried on the student's behalf, we need to find out if students array already contains the student's ObjectId. Is there a way to specify in the projection of a find query to retrieve student ObjectId from students array only if it is there?

I tried to see if I could $elemMatch operator but it is geared towards an array of sub-documents. I understand that I could use aggregation framework but it seems that it would be on overkill in this case. Aggregation framework would probably not be as fast as a single find query. Is there a way to query course collection to so that the returned document could be in a form similar to this?

{
        "_id" : ObjectId("51780fb5c9c41825e3e21fc4"),
        "name" : "CS 101",
        "students" : [
                ObjectId("51780f796ec4051a536015d0"),
        ]
}

It seems like the $in operator would serve your purposes just fine.

You could do something like this (pseudo-query):

if (db.courses.find({"students" : {"$in" : [studentId]}, "course" : courseId }).count() > 0) {
  // student is enrolled in class
}

Alternatively, you could remove the "course" : courseId clause and get back a set of all classes the student is enrolled in.

I am trying to explain by putting problem statement and solution to it. I hope it will help

Problem Statement:

Find all the published products, whose name like ABC Product or PQR Product, and price should be less than 15/-

Solution:

Below are the conditions that need to be taken care of

1. Product price should be less than 15
2. Product name should be either ABC Product or PQR Product
3. Product should be in published state.

Below is the statement that applies above criterion to create query and fetch data.

$elements = $collection->find(
             Array(
                [price] => Array( [$lt] => 15 ),
                [$or] => Array(
                            [0]=>Array(
                                    [product_name]=>Array(
                                       [$in]=>Array(
                                            [0] => ABC Product,
                                            [1]=> PQR Product
                                            )
                                        )
                                    )
                                ),
                [state]=>Published
                )
            );