As per the mongoldb documentation, a combination of distinct
Finds the distinct values for a specified field across a single collection or view and returns the results in an array.
and indexes collection operations are what would return all possible values for a given key, or index:
Returns an array that holds a list of documents that identify and describe the existing indexes on the collection
So in a given method one could do use a method like the following one, in order to query a collection for all it's registered indexes, and return, say an object with the indexes for keys (this example uses async/await for NodeJS, but obviously you could use any other asynchronous approach):
async function GetFor(collection, index) {
let currentIndexes;
let indexNames = [];
let final = {};
let vals = [];
try {
currentIndexes = await collection.indexes();
await ParseIndexes();
//Check if a specific index was queried, otherwise, iterate for all existing indexes
if (index && typeof index === "string") return await ParseFor(index, indexNames);
await ParseDoc(indexNames);
await Promise.all(vals);
return final;
} catch (e) {
throw e;
}
function ParseIndexes() {
return new Promise(function (result) {
let err;
for (let ind in currentIndexes) {
let index = currentIndexes[ind];
if (!index) {
err = "No Key For Index "+index; break;
}
let Name = Object.keys(index.key);
if (Name.length === 0) {
err = "No Name For Index"; break;
}
indexNames.push(Name[0]);
}
return result(err ? Promise.reject(err) : Promise.resolve());
})
}
async function ParseFor(index, inDoc) {
if (inDoc.indexOf(index) === -1) throw "No Such Index In Collection";
try {
await DistinctFor(index);
return final;
} catch (e) {
throw e
}
}
function ParseDoc(doc) {
return new Promise(function (result) {
let err;
for (let index in doc) {
let key = doc[index];
if (!key) {
err = "No Key For Index "+index; break;
}
vals.push(new Promise(function (pushed) {
DistinctFor(key)
.then(pushed)
.catch(function (err) {
return pushed(Promise.resolve());
})
}))
}
return result(err ? Promise.reject(err) : Promise.resolve());
})
}
async function DistinctFor(key) {
if (!key) throw "Key Is Undefined";
try {
final[key] = await collection.distinct(key);
} catch (e) {
final[key] = 'failed';
throw e;
}
}
}
So querying a collection with the basic _id
index, would return the following (test collection only has one document at the time of the test):
Mongo.MongoClient.connect(url, function (err, client) {
assert.equal(null, err);
let collection = client.db('my db').collection('the targeted collection');
GetFor(collection, '_id')
.then(function () {
//returns
// { _id: [ 5ae901e77e322342de1fb701 ] }
})
.catch(function (err) {
//manage your error..
})
});
Mind you, this uses methods native to the NodeJS Driver. As some other answers have suggested, there are other approaches, such as the aggregate framework. I personally find this approach more flexible, as you can easily create and fine-tune how to return the results. Obviously, this only addresses top-level attributes, not nested ones.
Also, to guarantee that all documents are represented should there be secondary indexes (other than the main _id one), those indexes should be set as required
.