How to use MongoDBs aggregate `$lookup` as `findOne()`

You can also use "preserveNullAndEmptyArrays"

Like so:

 db.users.aggregate(
        [
            {   "$project": {     
                "fullName": {       
                    "$concat": [ "$firstName", " ", "$lastName"]     
                },
                "country": "$country"   
            }}, 
            { "$lookup": {     
                    "from": "countries",     
                    "localField": "country",     
                    "foreignField": "_id",     
                    "as": "countryInfo"   
            }}, 
            {"$unwind": {
                    "path": "$countryInfo",
                    "preserveNullAndEmptyArrays": true
                }
            },
        ]
    )

db.users.aggregate([
    {
        $lookup: {
            from: 'countries',
            localField: 'country',
            foreignField: '_id',
            as: 'country'
        }
    },
    {
        $unwind: '$country'
    }
]).pretty()

You can use this mongo query for getting the country object

You're almost there, you need to add another $project stage to your pipeline and use the $arrayElemAt to return the single element in the array.

db.users.aggregate(
    [
        {   "$project": {     
            "fullName": {       
                "$concat": [ "$firstName", " ", "$lastName"]     
            },
            "country": "$country"   
        }}, 
        { "$lookup": {     
                "from": "countries",     
                "localField": "country",     
                "foreignField": "_id",     
                "as": "countryInfo"   
        }}, 
        { "$project": { 
            "fullName": 1, 
            "country": 1, 
            "countryInfo": { "$arrayElemAt": [ "$countryInfo", 0 ] } 
        }} 
    ]
)

When you don't want to repeat all fields in project, just overwrite the field in question with $addFields:

db.users.aggregate([
    {   "$project": {     
        "fullName": {       
            "$concat": [ "$firstName", " ", "$lastName"]     
        },
        "country": "$country"   
    }}, 
    { "$lookup": {     
        "from": "countries",     
        "localField": "country",     
        "foreignField": "_id",     
        "as": "countryInfo"   
    }},
    { "$addFields": {
        "countryInfo": {
            "$arrayElemAt": [ "$countryInfo", 0 ]
        }
    }}
])