Question

99

Can I determine if a string is a MongoDB ObjectID?

rated 0 times [ 104] [ 5] / answers: 1 / hits: 132388 / 12 Years ago, thu, december 13, 2012, 12:00:00

I am doing MongoDB lookups by converting a string to BSON. Is there a way for me to determine if the string I have is a valid ObjectID for Mongo before doing the conversion?

Here is the coffeescript for my current findByID function. It works great, but I'd like to lookup by a different attribute if I determine the string is not an ID.

db.collection pages, (err, collection) ->

  collection.findOne

    _id: new BSON.ObjectID(id)

  , (err, item) ->

    if item

      res.send item

    else

      res.send 404

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kaitlynnb

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answered 12 Years ago julissaimana · Accepted Answer

I found that the mongoose ObjectId validator works to validate valid objectIds but I found a few cases where invalid ids were considered valid. (eg: any 12 characters long string)

var ObjectId = require('mongoose').Types.ObjectId;

ObjectId.isValid('microsoft123'); //true

ObjectId.isValid('timtomtamted'); //true

ObjectId.isValid('551137c2f9e1fac808a5f572'); //true

What has been working for me is casting a string to an objectId and then checking that the original string matches the string value of the objectId.

new ObjectId('timtamtomted'); //616273656e6365576f726b73

new ObjectId('537eed02ed345b2e039652d2') //537eed02ed345b2e039652d2

This work because valid ids do not change when casted to an ObjectId but a string that gets a false valid will change when casted to an objectId.