Searching by ID in MongoDB not working

Question

I'm setting up some basic searches in MongoDB, and while I'm able to find records by "ObjectId," I can't search by "_id". I'm conducting searches both directly in the Mongo console and writing search code in Atom, which I'm then running in a nodemon server.

 db.collection.find( { ObjectId( _id: "abcdefg" ) } ) // Returns a result 

 db.collection.find( { _id: "abcdefg" } )             // Returns null

The problem: If I enter search (1) into the console, it returns a result, yet when I enter the same search into Atom and run through nodemon, nodemon throws an error because "ObjectId" is undefined. (2) Always returns null, regardless of where I enter the search.

Are there any workarounds for this issue? Thanks!

Answer 1

Try

db.collection.find({"_id" : ObjectId("abcdefg")})

Side note. It is a better practice to have your keys in double quotes in json. Make that in to a habit.