Aliases are simply just JSON objects where every key is an expression. They are used to generate new documents from existing documents.
{
"username": "add($username, 'W')",
"profile": {
"description": "coalesce($description, 'No description provided')",
"age": "add($age, 1)",
"loves_cookies": "gt_eq($age, 1)",
"best_friend": "$best_friend"
},
"joined_at": "$joined_at"
}
As you can see, they can be nested objects. They are used all over the place in CookieDB, from selecting documents to editing tables.