Mongoose Find not working

Question

This is my first time writing a MVC app in Node/Express/Mongoose so I could really use some help. My .find() command just doesn't find anything! :(

Structure is that I have a an /app folder in the root. /app folder contains /models (schemas), /controllers and /views in it. And I have app.js outside in the root.

Somewhere in app.js:

// all necessary config/setup stuff..
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
mongoose.connect(config.db);
var app = express();
require('./config/routes')(app)

In my routes.js file:

var skills = require('../app/controllers/skills');
app.get('/', skills.showall);

My controller skills.js contains:

var Skill = require('../models/skill');

exports.showall = function(req, res) {
    Skill.find({}, function(err, docs){
        if (!err) {
            res.render('index', {title: 'Skilldom', skills: docs});
        }
        else {
            throw err;
        }
    });
}

Finally my Model skill.js contains:

var mongoose = require('mongoose');

//Skill schema definition
var skillSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    name: String,
    length: String,
});

var Skill = mongoose.model('Skill', skillSchema);

module.exports = Skill;

My index view renders, so I see the content from my index.jade template, but for some reason the find command in the model is not fetching anything. I can confirm that my database (in MongoHQ) has real data.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Change your Skill.js for this

var mongoose = require('mongoose');
mongoose.set('debug', true);

//Skill schema definition

var skillSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
  name: String,
  length: String,
});

var Skill = mongoose.model('Skill', skillSchema);
module.exports = Skill;

After that, you can see at the console if mongoose is doing your queries.

Answer 2

I was in the same situation as you describe and it turns out I didn't understand the magic of mongoose collection naming, in your code it will try to load the "skills" and if that's not what it's named in your mongo nothing will be returned. Should really toss a "so such collection" error instead imho.