Mongoose not saving data with no error

Question

I have this code

      User.findOne({ email: req.body.email }, function(err, user) {
        if (user) {
          return res.status(400).json([{ msg: 'The email address you have entered is already associated with another account.' }]);
        }
        user = new User({
          name: req.body.name,
          email: req.body.email,
          password: req.body.password,
          mobile: req.body.mobile
        });
        user.save(function(err) {
          res.json({ token: generateToken(user), user: user });
        });
      });

I tried sending a request with postman and I did get a response back with the user object which means there is no err in the save function

{
  "token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJleGNlcHRpb25zLnNnIiwic3ViIjoiNTc5NWQ0NzQxYmEzZWQwODE1ZTgzY2NmIiwiaWF0IjoxNDY5NDM3MDQ0LCJleHAiOjE0NzAwNDE4NDR9.2otkcPkJgsXvR8QOHAojDJ5YCxR7Uc2E4ApS77T55F8",
  "user": {
    "__v": 0,
    "created_at": "2016-07-25T08:57:24.612Z",
    "updated_at": "2016-07-25T08:57:24.612Z",
    "name": "Test",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "password": "$2a$10$3UmABiDPeo6iHZ.DFbwOO.1ANpUWQmwr86bYbTmRuFedsbDcE0bbC",
    "mobile": 12345,
    "_id": "5795d4741ba3ed0815e83ccf"
  }
}

However there is no entry of this inside my DB. I've check through my database with Robomongo and I'm sure that there is no data. What did I missed out?

Answer 1

This doesn't relate to OP's specific situation but for others who are trying unsuccessfully to save after modifying a Mixed property of your object, you have to call markModified(path) to let Mongoose know that the property has changed.

person.anything = { x: [3, 4, { y: "changed" }] }; // anything is 'Mixed' in the schema
person.markModified('anything');
person.save(); // anything will now get saved

Check out the 'Mixed' section of the Mongoose docs here

Answer 2

I know this sounds stupid, but Mongoose uses collection name in plural so

mongoose.model('User' ...

saves to users collection. I lost some hours before I refreshed the mongoDB client and realized that all my documents were in 'users' not in 'user'.

Answer 3

For anyone else having this issue, your model's _id SchemaType must be of type ObjectId.

Suppose we have a schema and model defined as:

var userSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
  _id: mongoose.Schema.ObjectId,
  userID: Number,
  name: String
});

var Users = mongoose.model('collectionName', userSchema);

And we want to update the name of the user with userID 1234:

Users.findOne({userID: 1234}, function(err, user) {
    user.name = "Jane Doe";

    user.save(function(err) {
       // ...
    }
}

Mongoose will successfully update it by performing:

users.update({ _id: ObjectId("anObjectID") }, { '$set': { name: 'Jane Doe' } })

If we had set the SchemaType of _id to String in userSchema, it would've done this:

users.update({ _id: 'anObjectID' }, { '$set': { name: 'Jane Doe' } })

Answer 4

Your arent handling error while saving the collection, replace your user.save function with

user.save(function(err){
      if(err){
           console.log(err);
           return;
      }

      res.json({ token: generateToken(user), user: user });
});

By this you will be able to track whether the data is saved or not and what can be the associated error.