sorting alpha with mongoose - node.js

Question

I'm trying to sort via mongoose 3.6.20 and I am receiving some unexpected results.
I have a list of companies with a name. At first I thought that maybe it was sorting in a case sensitive way. Which based on articles, I expect was true.
I'm now using a virtual property to down case the sort field. However, I'm still getting unexpected results.
CompanySchema.virtual('name_lower').get(function(){
return this.name.toLowerCase();
});
and when I sort
Company.find().sort({ name_lower: 1 });
I'm getting it in the following order:
company name
google
company name (yes a duplicate for testing)
I'm also outputting the value of my virtual property and it looks right. There is no whitespace or funky characters that would result in the 2nd 'company name' from appearing after google.
Using nodejs, express, mongoose.
What am I missing or doing incorrectly?
Update:
Based on the information provided in the answers, I refactored my schema to include some normalized fields and hooked into the pre save event of my document, where I update those normalized fields and sort using them in all future queries.
CompanySchema.pre('save', function(next){
this.normalized_name = this.name;
});
Next, is in the schema I use:
var CompanySchema = mongoose.Schema({
...
normalized_name: { type: String, set: normalize },
...
});
Where normalize is a function that for now, returns a lowercase version of the value passed into it. However, this allows me to expand on it later really fast, and I can quickly do the same to other fields that I might need to sort against.

Answer 1

As of MongoDB v3.4, case insensitive sorting can be done using collation method:
Company.find()
.collation({locale: "en" }) //or whatever collation you want
.sort({name:'asc'})
.exec(function(err, results) {
// use your case insensitive sorted results
});

Answer 2

Unfortunately MongoDB and Mongoose does not currently support complex sorting, so there are 2 options:
As you said, create a new field with the names sanitized to be all lowercase
Run a big for loop over all the data and update each company name to it's lower case form:
db.CompanyCollection.find().forEach(
function(e) {
e.CompanyName = e.CompanyName.toLowerCase();
db.CompanyCollection.save(e);
}
)
or
db.CompanyCollection.update({_id: e._id}, {$set: {CompanyName: e.CompanyName.toLowerCase()
Please see Update MongoDB collection using $toLower and Mongoose: Sort alphabetically as well for more info.

Answer 3

I want to put out that in this hook:
CompanySchema.pre('save', function(next){
this.normalized_name = this.name;
});
You'll have to call next(); at the end, if you want the normalized_name to be saved in the database, so the pre save hook would look like:
CompanySchema.pre('save', function(next){
this.normalized_name = this.name;
next();
});

Answer 4

This answer seems to be more helpful to me. I had to consider diacritics along with the case so I had used strength:3.
Mongoose: Sort alphabetically