Atomic Increment Operator

Mobile Backend Services supports the Mongo $inc atomic increment operator.

$inc

You can use $inc to increment (or decrement) a custom field by a specified value in a single update operation.

The operator accepts positive and negative increment amounts
It can only be applied to a single field per method call.

$inc is specified with the following form, where fieldName is the name of the field to update and value is a positive (or negative) number to increment (or decrement) fieldName by:

"fieldName": { "$inc:" value}

The operator must be enclosed in quotes, as shown above. The following methods support the $inc operator:

Examples

The following example increments the score custom field by 10 in a CustomObjects update to a custom object called family:

                      
                      
                        
                            $ curl -b c.txt -c c.txt -X PUT -F "id=511117915554f74313000009" -F "fields={"favorite":"play xbox 360", 
"pet":"shark" ,"score":{'$inc':10}}"
"api.cloud.appcelerator.com/v1/objects/family/update.json?key=TENIhpXtjFbkBbztvfZMwnciOjE9aHjd"
{
  "meta": {
    "code": 200,
    "status": "ok",
    "method_name": "updateCustomObject"
  },
  "response": {
    "family": [
      {
        "family_name": "ACS",
        "score": 10,
        "age": 40,
        "cars": 1,
        "favorite": "play xbox 360",
        "pet": "shark",
        "id": "511117915554f74313000009",
        "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:30:41+0000",
        "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:30:41+0000",
        "user": {
          "id": "511117905554f74313000003",
          "first_name": "Alice",
          "last_name": "Gal",
          "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:30:40+0000",
          "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:30:41+0000",
          "external_accounts": [
 
          ],
          "confirmed_at": "2013-02-05T14:30:40+0000",
          "username": "alice",
          "email": "alice@gal.com",
          "admin": "false"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

                          

                      
                    

The following example decrements the score custom field by 20 in a Checkins update:

$ curl -b c.txt -c c.txt -X PUT -F "checkin_id=511111945554f742d300000b" -F 
"custom_fields={"favorite":"play xbox 360", "pet":"shark" ,"score":{'$inc':-20}}"
"https://api.cloud.appcelerator.com/v1/checkins/update.json?key=TENIhpXtjFbkBbztvfZMwnciOjE9aHjd"
{
  "meta": {
    "code": 200,
    "status": "ok",
    "method_name": "updateCheckin"
  },
  "response": {
    "checkins": [
      {
        "id": "511111945554f742d300000b",
        "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:08+0000",
        "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:08+0000",
        "place": {
          "id": "511111935554f742d3000009",
          "name": "Maya Restaurant",
          "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:07+0000",
          "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:07+0000",
          "address": "303 2nd Street",
          "city": "San Francisco",
          "state": "CA",
          "country": "United States",
          "phone_number": "(415) 543-2928",
          "latitude": 37.784732,
          "longitude": -122.395441,
          "google_cid": "7106049823222705125",
          "user": {
            "id": "511111925554f742d3000003",
            "first_name": "Alice",
            "last_name": "Gal",
            "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:06+0000",
            "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:08+0000",
            "external_accounts": [
 
            ],
            "confirmed_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:06+0000",
            "username": "alice",
            "email": "alice@gal.com",
            "admin": "false"
          }
        },
        "user": {
          "id": "511111925554f742d3000003",
          "first_name": "Alice",
          "last_name": "Gal",
          "created_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:06+0000",
          "updated_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:08+0000",
          "external_accounts": [
 
          ],
          "confirmed_at": "2013-02-05T14:05:06+0000",
          "username": "alice",
          "email": "alice@gal.com",
          "admin": "false"
        },
        "custom_fields": {
          "family_name": "ACS",
          "score": 15,
          "age": 40,
          "cars": 1,
          "favorite": "play xbox 360",
          "pet": "shark"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

If you apply $inc to multiple fields in one Update call, you will get an error:

$ curl -b c.txt -c c.txt -X PUT -F "checkin_id=511111945554f742d300000b" -F 
"custom_fields={"favorite":"play xbox 360", "pet":"shark" ,"score":{$inc:10}, "age":{$inc:10}}"
"http://api.cloud.appcelerator.com/v1/checkins/update.json?key=HSejkGE9ghavAelMJv7bZYNM5HyMhqYq"
{
  "meta": {
    "status": "fail",
    "code": 400,
    "message": "$inc operation only support to increase one field once.",
    "method_name": "updateCheckin"
  }
}