Node.js: Mongoose schema default rand-tokens are not random

Question

I have a UserSchema like this and I cannot seem to generate unique random activation_token's.

I am using rand-token for the generation. Found here.

 var UserSchema = new Schema({
        activation_token: {
            type: String,
            default: randToken.generate(64),
        },
        email: {
            type: String,
            unique: true,
            sparse: true
        },
        first_name: {
            type: String
        },
        last_name: {
            type: String
        }
});

Seemed to work fine, but when running unit tests with Mocha, all of the activation_token fields were the same. I initially thought this had to do with time, since that is probably what is used to generate the tokens. It was possible that for each new document, the timestamp was the same, so I ran some tests with a function that generated about 30 tokens one right after the other, and they were not similar.

Any ideas on what is going on here?

Here are some examples of the problem:

{
    "_id": {
        "$oid": "555dfd137c914edc1b41bbda"
    },
    "email": "oka@haek.io",
    "first_name": "Lenora",
    "last_name": "Aguilar",
    "date_added": {
        "$date": "2015-05-21T15:43:01.576Z"
    },
    "activation_token": "EyBNwu4vxOIXMzj7W5kVOeICfWwxfjXmHkz7ZPHLjkf0MU86QM2aIKNDyvI2YmTR",
    "__v": 0
},
{
    "_id": {
        "$oid": "555dfd107c914edc1b41bbd6"
    },
    "email": "ediuki@mu.edu",
    "first_name": "Eugene",
    "last_name": "Green",
    "date_added": {
        "$date": "2015-05-21T15:43:01.576Z"
    },
    "activation_token": "EyBNwu4vxOIXMzj7W5kVOeICfWwxfjXmHkz7ZPHLjkf0MU86QM2aIKNDyvI2YmTR",
    "__v": 0
}

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered May 21 '15 at 16:35

It makes sense that they would all be the same. You're calling generate once at schema definition time and you're feeding the result of that call to the mongoose schema definition, not the function itself. You could try something like this:

var UserSchema = new Schema({
    activation_token: {
        type: String,
        default: function() {
            return randToken.generate(64);
        }
    },
    email: {
        type: String,
        unique: true,
        sparse: true
    },
    first_name: {
        type: String
    },
    last_name: {
        type: String
    }
});

Heiko Ihde · Answer 2 · 2023-07-13T05:08:39.543

0

Andrews answer worked fine for me. Instead of just generating the random token once (when the schema is created). The function is called and creates a new token every time a new user is created.

The only thing I changed to make it shorter and better readable was to use a lambda instead:

var UserSchema = new Schema({
    activation_token: {
        type: String,
        default: () => randToken.generate(64)
    },
    email: {
        type: String,
        unique: true,
        sparse: true
    },
    first_name: {
        type: String
    },
    last_name: {
        type: String
    }
});

edited Jul 13 '23 at 05:08

answered Jul 06 '23 at 19:29

Heiko Ihde

1
3

Add an explanation to your answer. – sanitizedUser Jul 11 '23 at 23:09
Done. Is the answer better now? – Heiko Ihde Jul 13 '23 at 05:09
Yeah, but how is it different from the accepted answer? I see that you are using a lambda instead of a function but that doesn't seem like a big enough difference to warrant a new answer. – sanitizedUser Jul 13 '23 at 08:06
You're right. Next answer will be better for sure. Thank you for the feedback. – Heiko Ihde Jul 14 '23 at 10:53

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 10 '18 at 12:08

-2

npm install rand-token --save

install the node package,

const randtoken = require('rand-token');

import in to js file and generate token

const a = randtoken.generate(256);

answered Aug 10 '18 at 12:08

arul mb

27
1

Node.js: Mongoose schema default rand-tokens are not random

3 Answers3