mongoose-version-history

Mongoose plugin that tracks version history of documents by storing diffs in JSON Patch format.

Install

npm install mongoose-version-history

Usage

To use the plugin, simply require it and add it to the mongoose-schemas you want versioning activated for:

const Schema = require('mongoose').Schema;
const versionHistory = require('mongoose-version-history');

let User = new Schema({
    name: {
        first: String,
        last: String
    },
    address: {
        street: String,
        no: String,
        zipCode: String,
        city: String,
        country: String
    },
    birthdate: Date,
    email: String,
    phone: String
});

User.plugin(versionHistory [, options]);

The plugin will add a new number-field indicating the current version of the document to your schema. It will store the history as JSON Patch diffs in a separate collection. Each changeset is directly bound to a specific version number, enabling you to track every change made for each version and to reconsruct a specific version of your document.

The version number gets incremented on each save/update.

Options

versionKey

The name of the version-field that gets added to the schema. Defaults to documentVersion.

collection

The name of the collection the history gets stored to. Defaults to the name of the schema's collection with an _h appended to it.

connection

The database connection object. This option is required if the database is being connected via mongoose.createConnection instead of mongoose.connect.

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const Schema = mongoose.Schema;
const versionHistory = require('mongoose-version-history');

let db = mongoose.createConnection('mongodb://my-database');

let User = new Schema({
    name: {
        first: String,
        last: String
    },
    address: {
        street: String,
        no: String,
        zipCode: String,
        city: String,
        country: String
    },
    birthdate: Date,
    email: String,
    phone: String
});

User.plugin(versionHistory, {
    connection: db
});

trackDate

If set to true, the date of creation will be tracked for each version, causing the history-collection to have an additional field date. If you want to redundantly store the date of the current version in the document itself aswell, additionally enable the addDateToDocument-option.

addDateToDocument

If set to true, and if the trackDate-option is enabled, the date of the current version will be reduntantly stored in the actual document aswell.

versionDateKey

The name of the versionDate-field that gets added to the schema if the addDateToDocument-option is enabled. Defaults to documentVersionDate.

Retrieving specific document version

To retrieve a specific version of your document, you can use the getVersion function, passing the version number you want to access.

The getVersion returns a promise resolving to the desired document version, but it also supports callbacks:

// Promises
User.findOne({...}).then(user => {
    return user.getVersion(2);
}).then(userV2 => {
    ...
});

// Callbacks
User.findOne({...}, (err, user) => {
    if(err) {
        ...
    }

    user.getVersion(2, (err, userV2) => {
        ...
    });
});

Accessing the history collection directly

To access the history collection directy, you can call the ```getHistoryModel`` function on a model. It will return a mongoose-model of the history collection:

let UserHistory = User.getHistoryModel();
UserHistory.find({...});
...

Each entry in the history collection represents a changeset (= one or more JSON Patches) and has the following schema:

var ChangeSet = new mongoose.Schema({
    parent: mongoose.SchemaTypes.ObjectId, // The ID of the source-document this changeset is attached to
    version: Number, // The version this changeset was created for
    patches: [{ // Array of JSON-Patches representing the change
        op: String, // Patch-operation
        path: String, // Patch-patch
        value: mongoose.SchemaTypes.Mixed // Patch-value
    }],
    date: Date // Only if the trackDate-option is enabled
});