About getters, setters, references, and validations on inbound data

[Nik Martin]

Yeah, that's a lot for one question, but I'm just getting started with Mongoose and need to get some things cleared up.

I have a mobile application that builds a fairly large JSON object from a user doing data collection in the field. When the user submits this object via a POST, I need to do several things to it before saving it. One that I most confused about the proper way is making references to other schemas.  I have a long Oracle RDBMS background, so I'm struggling to "cross over". 

When a user submits the json object to me, it's not very smart in relation to the schemas. The document just has a "username" which is the combination of two fields in my user schema, user_id and agency_id.  A data object is created by a USER, and USERs are members of AGENCY(ies) which have agency_ids. Agency ID is not _id, it's a number given to them by me, it's a simple increment that is remember-able by the user like a email address.  So when I get the json object, I need to lookup the user by user_id and agency_id, then replace the crewMember key with a user key that is the _id of the user I just looked up, prior to sticking the json into the model to validate. Is that doable directly in getters/setters?  Is that the proper way to make a reference? Will the schemas do the right thing magically?  I know they don't know how to find a user, but once I have found a user record, how to add it to the crewSchema that [needs to be || is already a] subdocument of the document schema 

My (simplified) schemas:

user.js

var userSchema = mongoose.Schema({

         user_id: {type: String, required: true},

         password: {type: String, required: true},

         agency_id: {type: String, required: true},

         first_name: {type: String, required: true},

         last_name: {type: String, required: true},

         address: String,

         city: String,

        ....

      });

Document Schema:

document.js:

 var crewSchema = new Schema(

         {

            crewMember:{ type: ObjectId , ref: 'User' },  << want to reference user in userSchema

            crewRole: String,

            crewLevel: String

         }

 var docSchema = mongoose.Schema({

        {

            runid:  { type: String, required: true },

            status: { type: String, required: false },

            version:Number,

            agency_id:Number,

            times: {

               recd: Date,

               insvc: Date

            },

            crew: [crewSchema],  <<<here is my crewschema subdocument - there can be multiple crew per document

            ref_trip_no: String,

            unit_id: String,

            ix_loc: {

....

});

And here is a JSON object I receive from the app:

{  doc_info: {

doc_id: "1234656abc",

 "crew": [

            {

               "crewMember":"nmartinez@1000",  << this is user_id + '@' + agency_id from userSchema 

               "crewRole": "operator",

               "crewLevel": "op3"

            },

            {

               "crewMember":"sobannon@1000",

               "crewRole": "safety",

               "crewLevel": "op2"

            }

        ],

"address": "123 main st",

...

}