Can't populate using mongoosejs

Question

Why I can't get result while try to populating my scheme (I use mongoosejs). In my case my category, subcategory, subsubcategory scheme don't use _id. I use custom id.

Here's my product scheme:

.....
categoryId: {
  type: String,
  ref: 'Catgory',
  required: true
},
subcategoryId: {
  type: String,
  ref: 'Subcategory',
  required: true
},
subsubcategoryId: {
  type: String,
  ref: 'Subsubcategory',
  required: true
});

const Product = mongoose.model('Product', product);
module.exports = Product;

And this is my product controller :

'getOne': function(req, res, next) {
    if (typeof req.params.id !== 'string') return res.send({
        'error-code': 3
    });

    Product.findOne({
            _id: req.params.id
        })
        .populate({
            path: 'category',
            select: 'name'
        })
        .populate({
            path: 'subcategory',
            select: 'name'
        })
        .populate({
            path: 'subsubcategory',
            select: 'name'
        })
        .exec(function(error, response) {
            if (error) return handleError(error);
            return res.send(response);
        })
}

Thank you very much for your help.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, as of right now, you can only populate fields using foreign _ids. Populating by different fields has been a heavily requested feature on the mongoose GitHub for quite a while.