define primary key myself and prevent creating the _id in mongodb - node.js

I am two questions:
1- I want get by Id from database but operation is based on the key that is made automatically by MangoDB e.g _id. I want to search based on a field that I created myself e.g: id. for this porpouse I used following :
app.get('/:id',async(req,res)=>{
try{
const get=await product.findById({id:req.params.id});
res.json(get);
}
catch(err){
res.send(err);
}
});
and get following output:
{"stringValue":"\"{ id: '1' }\"","valueType":"Object","kind":"Number","value":{"id":"1"},"path":"_id","reason":{"generatedMessage":true,"code":"ERR_ASSERTION","actual":false,"expected":true,"operator":"=="},"name":"CastError","message":"Cast to Number failed for value \"{ id: '1' }\" (type Object) at path \"_id\" for model \"product\""}
when creating the database the fied _id is created by mongodb and know as key. What command should I use to prevent this field from being created? how do i define key field myself in database or select my own definition field as the primary key on which to search?

If you want to do that, you should use find method:
const get = await product.find({id:req.params.id});
I'm not sure, but I think that is not possible to avoid the creation of field _id in mongodb, although you can avoid the ObjectId type if you specify the field _id with a custom value (should be unique) when you insert the document.
But if you want to use a custom id value, you will need to use mongoose find method by you custom id as I indicated before. Since your custom id field should be unique you can use findOne in order to improve the performance of the query.

Related

Mongo - Create custom _id

So currently when one of my documents is made, Mongo generates a random ObjectId. However I would like this to be a value of my choosing. I am using postman to test this and if I create a new document and specify a value for _id then it ignores it and overwrites it with the one that Mongo generates.
I am using node to define my schema and I haven't declared an _id field, is that what I must do?
Bydefault Mongodb will generate _id of Type ObjectId ,
in mongoose if you not define _id field , it will take _id of type ObjectId
if you want to add _id field by your self , you need to define like this in your mongoose model schema
_id: {
type: Number
}

How to model MongoDB User Schema and their corresponding data?

I'm creating a Google Keeper replica where a user can log in and the list of todo list for that user is stored.
I'm new to mongoDB, express, and react, and I was wondering how someone would go about doing this. Would you create a User Schema with the "list objects" or create a User Schema and a separate List schema.
I think the creating one schema would be more efficient, but when I go to update or delete a note, I don't know how I would target a specific note without an ID since the ID would be associated with the entire user schema.
Thank you!
You can assign an unique id to the list entries while inserting them into the database. For example, you can use timestamp. The structure of your list items will be something like-
{ itemId: "1595488458403", value: "Do the laundry" }
As the items will be created one by one, therefore, there timestamps will be different. To create the timestamp of the present time, use-- new Date().getTime()
Here's the roadmap
Bring the value of the list item from your frontend to the backend. (say, "Do the laundry")
Define a variable "itemId" in the backend route:
itemId = new Date().getTime()
While inserting the item to the user's list of to-dos, insert:
{ itemId: itemId, value: "Do the laundry" }

How to expose MongoDB documents primary keys in a REST API?

I am building a REST API with MongoDB + nodeJS. All the documents are stored and are using _id as the primary key. I've read here that we should not expose the _id and we should use another ID which is not incremental.
In the DB, a document is represented as:
{
_id: ObjectId("5d2399b83e9148db977859ea")
bookName: "My book"
}
For the following the endpoints, how should the documents be exposed?
GET /books
GET /books/{bookId}
Currently my API returns:
{
_id: "5d2399b83e9148db977859ea"
bookName: "My book"
}
but should it instead return something like:
{
id: "some-unique-id-generated-on-creation"
bookName: "My book"
}
Questions
Should I expose the _id so that one can make queries such as:
GET /books/5d2399b83e9148db977859ea
Should I use a UUID for my ID instead of ObjectId?
Should I keep the internal _id (but never expose it) and create another attribute id which would use UUID or another custom generated ID ?
Is it a good practice to work with _id in my backend or should I only make queries using my own custom ID? Example: find({ id: }) instead of find({ _id: })
To answer your questions.
You can expose _id so that authenticated users can make queries like GET, PUT and PATCH on that _id.
MongoDB has support that allows you to generate your own BSON ID and use it, instead of mongodb created it's own _id during the insert.
There is no need of duplicating logic, the main purpose of _id is to identify each document separately and having two id columns means you are storing redundant data, follow DRY (DO NOT REPEAT YOURSELF) principle wherever possible.
It's not a bad practice to work with _id in your backend.
Hope this helps!
Given you're using Mongoose, you can use 'virtuals', which are essentially fake fields that Mongoose creates. They're not stored in the DB, they just get populated at run time:
// Duplicate the ID field.
Schema.virtual('id').get(function(){
return this._id.toHexString();
});
// Ensure virtual fields are serialised.
Schema.set('toJSON', {
virtuals: true
});
Any time toJSON is called on the Model you create from this Schema, it will include an 'id' field that matches the _id field Mongo generates. Likewise you can set the behaviour for toObject in the same way.
You can refer the following docs:
1) https://mongoosejs.com/docs/api.html
2) toObject method
In my case, whether it's a security risk or not, but my _id is a concatenation of any of the fields in my Document that are semantically considered as keys, i.e. if i have First Name, Last Name, and Email as my identifier, and a fourth field such as Age as attribute, then _id would be concatenation of all these 3 fields. It would not be difficult to get and update such record as long as I have First Name, Last Name and email information available

Mongodb custom object id

If I want to use custom object id(using firebase user uid) in a mongodb model, then do I have to do anything thing different in model declaration or at the time of saving instance of the model?
Yes it is perfectly fine to use firebase user uid for an object id, if some value is present in _id field of a document being stored, it is treated as objectId.
Just make sure every object has a unique _id as _id is indexed and is used as primary key.

Mongoose.js: is it possible to change name of ObjectId?

Some question about mongo ObjectId in mongoose
1) Can be ObjectId field by named not as _id? And How to do that? When I do in my code:
MySchema = new mongoose.Schema({
id : mongoose.Schema.ObjectId
});
it changes nothing.
2) If I have objectId field called _id is it possible to return from request another name for this field (for example just "id" - to send it on the in web response);
3) And question just for understanding: why is the ObjectId _id field accessible through "id" property not "_id"?
Thanks, Alex
The "_id" element is part of the mongodb architecture which guarantee that every document in a collection can be uniquely identified. This is especially important if you use sharding to allow unique identifier across disparate machine. Therefore this is a design choice so there is no way to get ride of it :)
The default value for _id are generated as follows:
timestamp
hash of the machine hostname
pid of the generating process
increment
but you can use whatever value you want as long is unique.
If it's easier for you think about the _id of something which has to be there, but you really don't care about :) Just leave the system to auto generate it and use your own identifier.
So if you still wanna create your own "id" execute something like that:
db.mySchema.ensureIndex({"id": 1}, {"unique" : true})
but make sure that is really unique and it doesn't conflict with the API you use.
2) Rename it on the application side, just before sending it as the web response.
3) I think this is because of the API you use. Maybe the author found it more logical to return the id instead of _id ? Honestly never tried mongoose :)

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