how to search in collections that were created manually in mongoDB with mongoose js

Question

This may sound silly question, but I started learning mongoDB and mongoosejs v7. When I made a database, I chose to add sample data for practice. The problem is I don't know how to search for documents in the collection. I tried to use find method but it needs a model so I create the model and pass the name of the collection that I want to search inside it.

as you can see it creates "test" database and put new collection. I don't want to make new collection I want to search inside other collection. Please answer my question if you understand it and know the solution.

Answer 1

You get an access to the connected database using a mongoose method on the current connection via the getClient() method. You can store it in a variable.

const client = mongoose.connection.getClient();

On this client object, you can access any database you would like to.

const client = mongoose.connection.getClient();
const db = await client.db('<any_database_name>');

Using this db variable, you can now make any query to the database.

Eg.

const users = await db
      .collection('users')
      .find()
      .toArray();

The .find() method returns a cursor, which then needs to be transformed into an array, hence I have used the toArray() method.

Here's a full example

const mongoose = require('mongoose');

mongoose
  .connect('mongodb://localhost:27017/icard')
  .then(async (result) => {
    console.log('connected');
    const client = mongoose.connection.getClient();
    const users = await client
      .db('school')
      .collection('users')
      .find()
      .toArray();
    console.log(users);
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    console.log(err.message);
    process.exit(0);
  });