How to populate reference field in virtual method in Mongoose?

Question

I have following schema.

var ItemSchema = new Schema({
name : String
,location: {
    address: { type: String, default:''}, 
    geolocation: {longitude: Number, latitude:Number}, 
    place : {type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref:'Place'} 
},
ranking_in_place : Number })

Place is a reference to Place schema which has name, city, country etc. fields.

I want to create a virtual for ranking_summary:

ItemSchema.virtual('ranking_summary').get(function() { 
    if(this.ranking_in_place <= 5){
        if(this.ranking_in_place == 1){
            return "Most popular item" + " in " + this.location.place.name 
        }
    }
})

I cannot get this.location.place.name value because this.location.place is a reference, and not populated. How can I access this value?

Answer 1

Have you made sure to call .populate() on your queries? Otherwise, Mongoose won't know to pull in the reference object. Example:

ItemModel.findOne().populate('place').exec(function (err, item) {
    console.log(item.ranking_in_place)
})

Answer 2

Model.find().populate(path, fields, conditions, options);

so for options you could use

{ sort: 'order' } // ascending
{ sort: [['order', 1 ]] } // ascending
{ sort: [['order', 'asc' ]] } // ascending
{ sort: [['order', 'desc' ]] } // ascending
{ sort: [['order', -1 ]] } // descending
{ sort: [['order', 'desc' ]] } // descending
{ sort: [['order', 'descending' ]] } // descending