Late answer but you can also try this when defining your schema.
/**
* toJSON implementation
*/
schema.options.toJSON = {
transform: function(doc, ret, options) {
ret.id = ret._id;
delete ret._id;
delete ret.__v;
return ret;
}
};
Note that ret is the JSON'ed object, and it's not an instance of the mongoose model. You'll operate on it right on object hashes, without getters/setters.
And then:
Model
.findById(modelId)
.exec(function (dbErr, modelDoc){
if(dbErr) return handleErr(dbErr);
return res.send(modelDoc.toJSON(), 200);
});
Edit: Feb 2015
Because I didn't provide a solution to the missing toJSON (or toObject) method(s) I will explain the difference between my usage example and OP's usage example.
OP:
UserModel
.find({}) // will get all users
.exec(function(err, users) {
// supposing that we don't have an error
// and we had users in our collection,
// the users variable here is an array
// of mongoose instances;
// wrong usage (from OP's example)
// return res.end(users.toJSON()); // has no method toJSON
// correct usage
// to apply the toJSON transformation on instances, you have to
// iterate through the users array
var transformedUsers = users.map(function(user) {
return user.toJSON();
});
// finish the request
res.end(transformedUsers);
});
My Example:
UserModel
.findById(someId) // will get a single user
.exec(function(err, user) {
// handle the error, if any
if(err) return handleError(err);
if(null !== user) {
// user might be null if no user matched
// the given id (someId)
// the toJSON method is available here,
// since the user variable here is a
// mongoose model instance
return res.end(user.toJSON());
}
});