If i have a mongo document id as a string how do I query for it as an _id?
Will it work correctly to do .find({_id:'stringID'})
or do I need to convert it to a bson object first?
If i have a mongo document id as a string how do I query for it as an _id?
Will it work correctly to do .find({_id:'stringID'})
or do I need to convert it to a bson object first?
Do you mean you have the 24 hex digit string of an ObjectId?
Assuming that's what you mean, most drivers have a way to take a string and convert it to an ObjectId. In JavaScript that's:
.find({_id:new ObjectId("4f91bfcfaa7c5687a0c686d4")})
Updated to be a bit more useful for the node-native driver (from the documentation at https://github.com/christkv/node-mongodb-native):
// Get the objectID type
var ObjectID = require('mongodb').ObjectID;
var idString = '4e4e1638c85e808431000003';
collection.findOne({_id: new ObjectID(idString)}, console.log) // ok
collection.findOne({_id: idString}, console.log) // wrong! callback gets undefined
If your _id values are strings, you may query them just like any other field. (Just remember, if you are setting custom values for _id, they must be kept unique, or you will get a duplicate key error. )
Here is an example in the Mongo JS Shell:
> db.test.insert({_id:"stringID1"})
> db.test.insert({_id:"stringID2"})
> db.test.insert({_id:"stringID3"})
> db.test.find({_id:"stringID1"})
{ "_id" : "stringID1" }
>
Is this what you were looking for? I hope I did not misunderstand your question!