Acess User Information from Appointment Schema

Question

I am a newbie to ExpressJs and NodeJS . I am trying to fetch my userInformation to Appointment schema. How would I access my user schema from appointment schema? I am quite sure that we will have to use populate, But I am not aware of how to use it

Appointment Schema

var appointmentSchema = mongoose.Schema({
    userId: String,
    visitType : String,
    timeDuration : String,
    startTime : Date,
    endTime : Date,
    status : String

  });

User Schema :

var userSchema = mongoose.Schema({
  _id : String,
  prefix : String,
  firstName : String,
  middleName : String,
  lastName : String,
  dob : String,
  age : Number,
  gender : String
});

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Well, I'll assume that the names of those TWO above schemas are Appointment and User respectively, so far there is nothing relates those schemas with each other, so:

First thing: You need to mention that userId attribute in Appointment schema refers to User schema as follow:

userId: { type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: 'User' },

instead of:

userId: String,

Second thing: On trying to fetch your userInformation from Appointment schema, your query will be:

Appointment
  .find({ /* whatever your filters options */ })
  .populate('userId')
  .exec()

Read more about mongoose population: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/populate.html