# Atomic Field Operations

**URL:** <https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/atomic-field-operations/14128>\
**Category:** GraphQL\
**Tags:** kind:enhancement\
**Created:** [May 12, 2021, 1:05pm UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/atomic-field-operations/14128 "2021-05-12T13:05:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![amaster507](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/amaster507/32/4123_2.png) [@amaster507](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/amaster507)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2021, 7:32am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/atomic-field-operations/14128/3 "2021-05-13T07:32:26Z")

</div>

I converted this over to a feature request, I can give some use cases for this.

- A voting system that needs to add one transactionally without record of who casts the vote

- A simplistic social media use case where a post can have likes but liking users are not tracked, really just a deviant of the above.

- A counter for IoT tool that tracks persons/things in and out. There are door greeters at stores counting heads in and out and an application in that manner would need to always be accurate between multiple doors. This is probably the most real use case atm.

References to support request:

In a single MySQL query, you can increment a value with

```sql
UPDATE store_counts
SET heads = heads + 1
WHERE store_id = ?

```

---

_[View the full topic](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/atomic-field-operations/14128)._