How do I prevent mongoose from creating id's when I create a schema with a place for a reference to another mongoose object?

Question

This is not a duplicate as the questions I "duplicated" is talking about removing id's from subchemas. Here I want to prevent mongoose from filling the hours in my calendar with id's that reference nothing. It's just supposed to store lessons with lesson id's.

I'm trying to make a calendar with weeks, days and hours, where each hour should be able to reference a Lesson.

This is my calendar schema:

var mongoose = require("mongoose");

var calendarSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    owner: {type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: "User"},
    weeks: [{
        number: Number,
        days: [{
            number: Number,
            hours: [{
                number: Number,
                available: { type: Boolean, default: false },
                booked: { type: Boolean, required: true, default: false },
                lesson: {type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: "Lesson"}
            }]
        }]
    }]
});

module.exports = mongoose.model("Calendar", calendarSchema);

I create a new calendar for each user when they register using this function

generateCalendar = function() {
    var calendar = {};
    var date = new Date(2017,0,2);

    calendar.weeks = [];
    for (var w = 0; w < 52; w++) {
        calendar.weeks[w] = {};
        calendar.weeks[w].number = w+1; 
        calendar.weeks[w].days = [];
        for (var d = 0; d < 7; d++) {
            calendar.weeks[w].days[d] = {};
            calendar.weeks[w].days[d].date = new Date(date.setDate(date.getDate()+1))
            calendar.weeks[w].days[d].hours = [];
            calendar.weeks[w].days[d].number = d+1; 
            for (var h = 0; h < 24; h++) {
                calendar.weeks[w].days[d].hours[h] = {};
                calendar.weeks[w].days[d].hours[h].number = h+1;
            }
        }
    }
    return calendar;
}

as input when creating the calendar

Calendar.create(generateCalendar(), function(err, calendar) {
                if (err) {
                    console.log(err);
                } else {
                    user.calendar = calendar;
                    user.save();
                    calendar.owner = user;
                    calendar.save();
                    res.redirect('/dashboard');
                }
            });

The problem is that each hour in the users calendar now contains a mongoose object id even if I haven't assigned any lesson.

This is what a typical hour looks like:

{ available: true,
  booked: false,
  _id: 5890b0f1abe4da6e879e2e38,
  number: 13 }

I don't know why there's an id in the hour, or what it's referencing! And if I add a Lesson at hour 13 it becomes

{ available: false,
  booked: true,
  lesson: 5890b1dfabe4da6e879e520a,
  _id: 5890b0f1abe4da6e879e2e38,
  number: 13 }

@chridam, I saw your comment in the other answer and it worked perfectly. Thanks! — vhflat, Feb 07 '17 at 13:58

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 10 '17 at 12:36

So for anyone struggling with the same problem, I changed the hours field to

hours: [{
                number: Number,
                available: { type: Boolean, default: false },
                booked: { type: Boolean, required: true, default: false },
                _id: false,
                lesson: {type: mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId, ref: "Lesson"}
            }]

And that's it. No sure why mongoose started creating ID's for each hour.

How do I prevent mongoose from creating id's when I create a schema with a place for a reference to another mongoose object?

1 Answers1