Modern
From MongoDB 3.6 there is a "novel" approach to this by using $lookup to perform a "self join" in much the same way as the original cursor processing demonstrated below.
Since in this release you can specify a "pipeline" argument to $lookup as a source for the "join", this essentially means you can use $match and $limit to gather and "limit" the entries for the array:
db.messages.aggregate([
{ "$group": { "_id": "$conversation_ID" } },
{ "$lookup": {
"from": "messages",
"let": { "conversation": "$_id" },
"pipeline": [
{ "$match": { "$expr": { "$eq": [ "$conversation_ID", "$$conversation" ] } }},
{ "$limit": 10 },
{ "$project": { "_id": 1 } }
],
"as": "msgs"
}}
])
You can optionally add additional projection after the $lookup in order to make the array items simply the values rather than documents with an _id key, but the basic result is there by simply doing the above.
There is still the outstanding SERVER-9277 which actually requests a "limit to push" directly, but using $lookup in this way is a viable alternative in the interim.
NOTE: There also is $slice which was introduced after writing the original answer and mentioned by "outstanding JIRA issue" in the original content. Whilst you can get the same result with small result sets, it does involve still "pushing everything" into the array and then later limiting the final array output to the desired length.
So that's the main distinction and why it's generally not practical to $slice for large results. But of course can be alternately used in cases where it is.
There are a few more details on mongodb group values by multiple fields about either alternate usage.
Original
As stated earlier, this is not impossible but certainly a horrible problem.
Actually if your main concern is that your resulting arrays are going to be exceptionally large, then you best approach is to submit for each distinct "conversation_ID" as an individual query and then combine your results. In very MongoDB 2.6 syntax which might need some tweaking depending on what your language implementation actually is:
var results = [];
db.messages.aggregate([
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$conversation_ID"
}}
]).forEach(function(doc) {
db.messages.aggregate([
{ "$match": { "conversation_ID": doc._id } },
{ "$limit": 10 },
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$conversation_ID",
"msgs": { "$push": "$_id" }
}}
]).forEach(function(res) {
results.push( res );
});
});
But it all depends on whether that is what you are trying to avoid. So on to the real answer:
The first issue here is that there is no function to "limit" the number of items that are "pushed" into an array. It is certainly something we would like, but the functionality does not presently exist.
The second issue is that even when pushing all items into an array, you cannot use $slice, or any similar operator in the aggregation pipeline. So there is no present way to get just the "top 10" results from a produced array with a simple operation.
But you can actually produce a set of operations to effectively "slice" on your grouping boundaries. It is fairly involved, and for example here I will reduce the array elements "sliced" to "six" only. The main reason here is to demonstrate the process and show how to do this without being destructive with arrays that do not contain the total you want to "slice" to.
Given a sample of documents:
{ "_id" : 1, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 2, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 3, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 4, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 5, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 6, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 7, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 8, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 9, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 10, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 11, "conversation_ID" : 123 }
{ "_id" : 12, "conversation_ID" : 456 }
{ "_id" : 13, "conversation_ID" : 456 }
{ "_id" : 14, "conversation_ID" : 456 }
{ "_id" : 15, "conversation_ID" : 456 }
{ "_id" : 16, "conversation_ID" : 456 }
You can see there that when grouping by your conditions you will get one array with ten elements and another with "five". What you want to do here reduce both to the top "six" without "destroying" the array that only will match to "five" elements.
And the following query:
db.messages.aggregate([
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$conversation_ID",
"first": { "$first": "$_id" },
"msgs": { "$push": "$_id" },
}},
{ "$unwind": "$msgs" },
{ "$project": {
"msgs": 1,
"first": 1,
"seen": { "$eq": [ "$first", "$msgs" ] }
}},
{ "$sort": { "seen": 1 }},
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$_id",
"msgs": {
"$push": {
"$cond": [ { "$not": "$seen" }, "$msgs", false ]
}
},
"first": { "$first": "$first" },
"second": { "$first": "$msgs" }
}},
{ "$unwind": "$msgs" },
{ "$project": {
"msgs": 1,
"first": 1,
"second": 1,
"seen": { "$eq": [ "$second", "$msgs" ] }
}},
{ "$sort": { "seen": 1 }},
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$_id",
"msgs": {
"$push": {
"$cond": [ { "$not": "$seen" }, "$msgs", false ]
}
},
"first": { "$first": "$first" },
"second": { "$first": "$second" },
"third": { "$first": "$msgs" }
}},
{ "$unwind": "$msgs" },
{ "$project": {
"msgs": 1,
"first": 1,
"second": 1,
"third": 1,
"seen": { "$eq": [ "$third", "$msgs" ] },
}},
{ "$sort": { "seen": 1 }},
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$_id",
"msgs": {
"$push": {
"$cond": [ { "$not": "$seen" }, "$msgs", false ]
}
},
"first": { "$first": "$first" },
"second": { "$first": "$second" },
"third": { "$first": "$third" },
"forth": { "$first": "$msgs" }
}},
{ "$unwind": "$msgs" },
{ "$project": {
"msgs": 1,
"first": 1,
"second": 1,
"third": 1,
"forth": 1,
"seen": { "$eq": [ "$forth", "$msgs" ] }
}},
{ "$sort": { "seen": 1 }},
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$_id",
"msgs": {
"$push": {
"$cond": [ { "$not": "$seen" }, "$msgs", false ]
}
},
"first": { "$first": "$first" },
"second": { "$first": "$second" },
"third": { "$first": "$third" },
"forth": { "$first": "$forth" },
"fifth": { "$first": "$msgs" }
}},
{ "$unwind": "$msgs" },
{ "$project": {
"msgs": 1,
"first": 1,
"second": 1,
"third": 1,
"forth": 1,
"fifth": 1,
"seen": { "$eq": [ "$fifth", "$msgs" ] }
}},
{ "$sort": { "seen": 1 }},
{ "$group": {
"_id": "$_id",
"msgs": {
"$push": {
"$cond": [ { "$not": "$seen" }, "$msgs", false ]
}
},
"first": { "$first": "$first" },
"second": { "$first": "$second" },
"third": { "$first": "$third" },
"forth": { "$first": "$forth" },
"fifth": { "$first": "$fifth" },
"sixth": { "$first": "$msgs" },
}},
{ "$project": {
"first": 1,
"second": 1,
"third": 1,
"forth": 1,
"fifth": 1,
"
