Versions

Store changes within the document

Each field can also have an individual history. Reconstructing documents to a given version is much easier this way. In your application you don't have to explicitly track changes, but just create a new version of the property when you change its value. A document could look something like this:

{
  _id: "4c6b9456f61f000000007ba6"
  title: [
    { version: 1, value: "Hello world" },
    { version: 6, value: "Foo" }
  ],
  body: [
    { version: 1, value: "Is this thing on?" },
    { version: 2, value: "What should I write?" },
    { version: 6, value: "This is the new body" }
  ],
  tags: [
    { version: 1, value: [ "test", "trivial" ] },
    { version: 6, value: [ "foo", "test" ] }
  ],
  comments: [
    {
      author: "joe", // Unversioned field
      body: [
        { version: 3, value: "Something cool" }
      ]
    },
    {
      author: "xxx",
      body: [
        { version: 4, value: "Spam" },
        { version: 5, deleted: true }
      ]
    },
    {
      author: "jim",
      body: [
        { version: 7, value: "Not bad" },
        { version: 8, value: "Not bad at all" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Marking part of the document as deleted in a version is still somewhat awkward though. You could introduce a state field for parts that can be deleted/restored from your application:

{
  author: "xxx",
  body: [
    { version: 4, value: "Spam" }
  ],
  state: [
    { version: 4, deleted: false },
    { version: 5, deleted: true }
  ]
}