Query a date in MongoDB when it's stored as plain-text and format YYYY-MM-DD

Question

I am building a "filtering" system and I need to query users in the collection whose date of birth dates are between 2 dates.

The code I have right now looks like:

if (req.query.ageMin) {
  var dobMin = new Date(dateNow.setFullYear(dateNow.getFullYear() - req.query.ageMin));
}
if (req.query.ageMax) {
  var dobMax = dateNow.setFullYear(dateNow.getFullYear() - req.query.ageMax);
}

if (dobMin && dobMax) {
  query.dob = {
    $gte: dobMin,
    $lt: dobMax
  }
} else if (dobMin) {
  query.dob = {
    $gte: dobMin
  }
} else if (dobMax) {
  query.dob = {
    $lt: dobMax
  }
}

db.users.find(query).toArray(function (err, users) {
  console.log(users);
});

An empty array is returned (no error). I assume it's because the date in the collection are not a date object -- they are simply strings for example "1980-06-15". Is there any option I can pass to the query so that Mongo makes the stored date a date object when querying it? Or any solution for that matter...

Answer 1

Try converting the date instances to strings:

dobMin = dobMin.toISOString().substring(0, 10)
dobMax = dobMax.toISOString().substring(0, 10)