Sending JSON with 'id' instead of '_id'

[Charlie]

Any suggestions on what would be the cleanest and simplest way of
always sending JSON document strings with the '_id' attribute renamed
to 'id'?

I'm building an API and I want the client to always see 'id for every
document, as some client-side software (Backbone) depends on it.

Thanks

[addisonj]

A virtual property on all your models is a pretty safe and easy way to
do it.

An example:

Schema.virtual('id')
.get(function() {
return this._id.toHexString();
});

[Aaron Heckmann]

ThingSchema.methods.toBackbone = function () {

  var obj = this.toObject();

  obj.id = obj._id;

  delete obj._id;

  return obj;

}

Always send the output of the method above.

--
Aaron

[Kirk Bushell]

How do you do this across a collection though without having to loop through them every time? I've tried every possible combination of using virtuals/getters in combation with setting toJson/toObject settings on the schema, all to no avail. _id is ALWAYS returned, and it foobar's the JSON output.

[Jason Crawford]

Hmm, Backbone has a simpler way: When you define your model, just set the idAttribute property to '_id'. The Backbone docs explicitly suggest this if you're using Mongo: http://backbonejs.org/#Model-idAttribute

I'm doing this in a Mongoose + Backbone app and it's working fine. In fact, I defined my own Model class like this:

    var Model = Backbone.Model.extend({

      idAttribute: '_id',

      ...

    }

And then all my models extend that Model instead of extending Backbone.Model directly. Works great.

-Jason

--
Blog: http://blog.jasoncrawford.org  |  Twitter: @jasoncrawford

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