Node.js + MongoDB query not working properly with "$or" object

Question

I'm trying to create a route for users to be able to check other user's profiles. However, I want these profiles to be accesed via 2 different urls /profile/nickname and /profile/id so that a profile can be accesed by using either the user's nickname or user id. I tried the following code:

app.get("/profile/:id", function(req, res) {

User.findOne( { $or : [{ "nickname": req.params.id },{ "_id": req.params.id }] }, function(err, user) {
    if(user)
    {
        res.render('users/profile.jade', {
        locals: { 
            currentUser: user, 
            title: user.nickname +"'s Profile",
            jsf:[],
        }
        });
    }
    else
    {
        res.render('404.jade', { 
            status: 404,
            title: 'Page Not Found', 
                jsf: []  
        });
    }
});
});

The problem is, it seems like it is only working with the id and not with the nickname, meaning that if I acces /profile/4f4ae474546708b219000005 things work, but if I access /profile/mmellad which is the given nickname for that user, I get the 404 page.

There is also one more thing I figured out that works fine for the nicknames, which is changing the query from

User.findOne( { $or : [{ "nickname": req.params.id },{ "_id": req.params.id }] }

to

User.findOne( { "nickname": req.params.id } }

in this case /profile/mmellado works fine but using the user id obviously doesn't .

What would be the right way to do this? I'm thinking I may be using a wrong approach.

Another thing to mention is that if I try the following code in the mongo console, it works fine as well:

x = db.users.findOne({ $or: [ {nickname:"mmellado"}, {_id:ObjectId("4f4ae474546708b219000005")}  ]})

I tested that code by inserting the right nickname and a wrong _id, then tested with a wrong nickname and right _id. In both cases, x ended up containing the object for the record I needed.

I think I may be able to fix it with an additional route, but I'm new to Node.js and Express all together so I'm not sure what the propper approach would be.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you tried this in console: x = db.users.findOne({ $or: [ {nickname:"mmellado"}, {_id:ObjectId("mmellado")} ]}). You'll see an error even if nickname matches because it first tries to convert "mmellado" into an ObjectId and fails. This is might be the reason your page fails when using nickname.

I don't know the node.js mongodb-driver internals, but it probably tries to convert the argument internally to ObjectId before querying for "_id" field (and fail if not valid). I didn't check this, so try it out. Also try checking the err object on the callback. If that is the problem one way to solve this is to check is argument is valid ObjectId before querying , for example create ObjectId out of it yourself and catch exception if it fails. Something like this (not tested):

try {
  var objectId = createObjectId(req.params.id); // Create this function yourself
  User.findOne( { "_id": objectId }, callbackFunction );
} catch (err) {
    // Fall back to using nickname
    User.findOne( { "nickname": req.params.id }, callbackFunction );
}