Mongoose/Mongo find in array of objectIds

Question

I have this item in mongo:

[ { title: 'Product Name',
_id: 5052843e023273693300013c,
description: 'This is a fake description',
categories: [ 5052843e023273693300010a ],
} ]

I want to find products like this that have this category. I have tried:

Product.find({ categories:  mongoose.Types.ObjectId('5052843e023273693300010a')})
Product.find({ categories:  mongoose.mongo.BSONPure.ObjectID.fromString('5052843e023273693300010a')})
Product.find({ categories:  '5052843e023273693300010a'})
Product.find({ 'categories':  '5052843e023273693300010a'})
Product.find({ categories:  {$in: ['5052843e023273693300010a']}})
Product.find({ categories:  Schema.Types.ObjectId('5052843e023273693300010a')})

But nothing works. I can fetch by id just fine using: _id: '5052843e023273693300013c'.

Note that when the products were inserted the category ID were added as a string (meaning I just assigned the ID instead of the category objects but that doesn't explain why none of the above work - it's unquoted in the dump so perhaps Mongo recognizes as an object ID.

Similar questions on SO did not yield an answer.

I am using the latest Mongoose (3 something) and recent Mongo,Node.

Update:

I can fetch just fine from CLI using:

db.products.find({ categories: '5052843e02327369330000fe' }); 

and interestingly I can fetch it by doing the not equal in my code - huh?:

Product.find({ categories: { $ne: '5052843e02327369330000fe' }})

My schema is as follows:

    var Product = new Schema({
        title: { type: String, required: true },
        slug: { type: String },
        summary: { type: String }, //browser title
        description: { type: String, required: false },
        excerpt: { type: String },    //for list and also for meta description
        publish: { type: Boolean },
        featured: { type: Boolean },
        unavailable: { type: Boolean },
        model: { type: String },
        google: { type: String },
        tags: { type: Array },
        categories:  [{ type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'Category' }],
        manufacturer: { type: String },
        variations: { type: Array },
        prices: { type: Array },
        images: { type: Array },
        specs: { type: Array },
        modified: { type: Date, default: Date.now }

    });

    var Category = new Schema({
        title: { type: String, required: true },
        description: { type: String },
        parent: { type: Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'Category' },
        images: { type: Array }
    });

Thanks

Answer 1

With Mongoose you have to force cast your string as an ID in some cases. Usually it automatically does this for you, but in your specific case, it doesn't. The following snippet of code will get all connections that contain the passed ID.

var mongoose = require('mongoose');
Node.find({ connections: mongoose.Types.ObjectId("535c5c1b8aa6dc5f021e8a98") }, function (err, results) { 
    console.log(results); 
});