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How to merge multiple documents into a single flat object in GROQ?

10 replies
Last updated: Oct 24, 2021
I just need a little groq help. I've got three documents I'm querying from:
*[_type == "businessName" ||
   _type == "contact" ||
   _type == "address"]
which returns the following:

[
  {
    "_createdAt": "2021-10-21T00:22:05Z",
    "_id": "address",
    "_rev": "TrMJZl8kHDIulSDqHsmmGk",
    "_type": "address",
    "_updatedAt": "2021-10-21T03:25:59Z",
    "addressLine1": "123 Main Street",
    "city": "Sometown",
    "postal": "T8A 1A1",
    "province": "AB"
  },
  {
    "_createdAt": "2021-10-21T02:39:46Z",
    "_id": "businessName",
    "_rev": "TrMJZl8kHDIulSDqHvQf8Y",
    "_type": "businessName",
    "_updatedAt": "2021-10-21T12:30:55Z",
    "businessName": "Example Business Name"
  },
  {
    "_createdAt": "2021-10-21T00:21:00Z",
    "_id": "contact",
    "_rev": "qIVfBk0FCSxuep3bFCat6O",
    "_type": "contact",
    "_updatedAt": "2021-10-21T12:20:21Z",
    "email": "<mailto:email@domain.com|email@domain.com>",
    "fax": "<tel:780-555-4444|780-555-4444>",
    "phone": "<tel:780-555-5555|780-555-5555>"
  }
]
I'd like to be able to pull the relevant info from each returned object and put it into a flat object:

{
  "businessName": "Example Business Name",
  "email": "<mailto:email@domain.com|email@domain.com>",
  "fax": "<tel:780-555-4444|780-555-4444>",
  "phone": "<tel:780-555-5555|780-555-5555>"
  "addressLine1": "123 Main Street",
  "city": "Sometown",
  "postal": "T8A 1A1",
  "province": "AB"
}
but i'm not sure how to achieve this. Any assistance would be much appreciated!
AI Update

Great question! You want to merge multiple documents into a single flat object. In GROQ, you can achieve this using object spread syntax (...) combined with array indexing.

Here's the solution for your specific case:

{
  ...*[_type == "businessName"][0],
  ...*[_type == "contact"][0],
  ...*[_type == "address"][0]
}

This query:

  1. Fetches each document type separately using [0] to get the first (and only) document
  2. Uses the spread operator ... to unpack all fields from each document
  3. Combines them into a single flat object

The result will be exactly what you're looking for:

{
  "businessName": "Example Business Name",
  "email": "email@domain.com|email@domain.com",
  "fax": "780-555-4444|780-555-4444",
  "phone": "780-555-5555|780-555-5555",
  "addressLine1": "123 Main Street",
  "city": "Sometown",
  "postal": "T8A 1A1",
  "province": "AB"
}

Alternative approach if you want to be more explicit about which fields to include:

{
  "businessName": *[_type == "businessName"][0].businessName,
  "email": *[_type == "contact"][0].email,
  "fax": *[_type == "contact"][0].fax,
  "phone": *[_type == "contact"][0].phone,
  "addressLine1": *[_type == "address"][0].addressLine1,
  "city": *[_type == "address"][0].city,
  "postal": *[_type == "address"][0].postal,
  "province": *[_type == "address"][0].province
}

This second approach gives you more control over field naming and avoids accidentally including system fields like _id, _type, _createdAt, etc.

The spread operator approach is cleaner if you're confident about the field names not conflicting and you don't mind including all fields from each document!

Show original thread
10 replies
hi User, you can query for unique fields like this:

*[_type in ["typeA", "typeB", "typeC"]] {
  aCommonField,
  anotherCommonField,
  _type == "typeA" => {
    typeAField,
  },
  _type == "typeB" => {
    typeBField,
  },
  /* etc */
}

ah scratch that — I misunderstood your issue 😅
These all look like singleton docs, so perhaps something like this would work?

{
  "businessName": *[_type == 'businessName'][0].businessName,
  "email": *[_type == 'contact'][0].email,
  /* etc */
}
This is super tedious though,… I wonder if you’d better off stitching these docs together via JS or something else:


{
  "businessName": *[_type == 'businessName'][0].businessName,
  "contact": *[_type == 'contact'] { email, fax, phone },
  /* etc */
}
Thanks for the input User. I initially was going to just put the 3 queries in a 
Promise.all
and spread the results into one object but I thought maybe I could do it with one query. Simpler is probably better in this case!
yeah I think there’s no way to ‘unwrap’ an object to parents, so for now you’d have to manually join them together… but just to be clear, you still can query for all data within one fetch without touching Promise.all, e.g.
client.fetch(`{
  "businessName": *[_type == '...'],
  "contact": *[_type == '...'],
}`)
Might help save a few extra queries!
Hey
user H
, actually what you want is doable:

{
  ...*[_type == 'businessName'][0],
  ...*[_type == 'contact'][0],
  /* etc */
}
It’ll merge all those docs into one single object. Note that if 2 documents have the same value name, it’ll be overwritten. GROQ is wild!
Hey User! Ok very cool. I’ll try out your suggestions! So a query doesn’t absolutely need the 
*[]
select/filter at the start? You can just create a projection and put the filters in there?
Yes that’s right, a query doesn’t need to start with 
*[]
, you can use a projection
Yes that’s right, a query doesn’t need to start with 
*[]
, you can use a projection
Well that’s a light bulb moment. I didn’t realize that. Thank you very much for the insight User! This is incredibly helpful!

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