[mongodb] How to access a preexisting collection with Mongoose?

I have a large collection of 300 question objects in a database test. I can interact with this collection easily through MongoDB's interactive shell; however, when I try to get the collection through Mongoose in an express.js application I get an empty array.

My question is, how can I access this already existing dataset instead of recreating it in express? Here's some code:

var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;

mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/test');
mongoose.model('question', new Schema({ url: String, text: String, id: Number }));

var questions = mongoose.model('question');
questions.find({}, function(err, data) { console.log(err, data, data.length); });

This outputs:

null [] 0

You can do something like this, than you you'll access the native mongodb functions inside mongoose:

var mongoose = require("mongoose");
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/local');

var connection = mongoose.connection;

connection.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'connection error:'));
connection.once('open', function () {

    connection.db.collection("YourCollectionName", function(err, collection){
        collection.find({}).toArray(function(err, data){
            console.log(data); // it will print your collection data
        })
    });

});

Go to MongoDB website, Login > Connect > Connect Application > Copy > Paste in 'database_url' > Collections > Copy/Paste in 'collection' .

var mongoose = require("mongoose");
mongoose.connect(' database_url ');
var conn = mongoose.connection;
conn.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'connection error:'));
conn.once('open', function () {

conn.db.collection(" collection ", function(err, collection){

    collection.find({}).toArray(function(err, data){
        console.log(data); // data printed in console
    })
});

});

Happy to Help. by RTTSS.

Here's an abstraction of Will Nathan's answer if anyone just wants an easy copy-paste add-in function:

function find (name, query, cb) {
    mongoose.connection.db.collection(name, function (err, collection) {
       collection.find(query).toArray(cb);
   });
}

simply do find(collection_name, query, callback); to be given the result.

for example, if I have a document { a : 1 } in a collection 'foo' and I want to list its properties, I do this:

find('foo', {a : 1}, function (err, docs) {
            console.dir(docs);
        });
//output: [ { _id: 4e22118fb83406f66a159da5, a: 1 } ]

I had the same problem and was able to run a schema-less query using an existing Mongoose connection with the code below. I've added a simple constraint 'a=b' to show where you would add such a constraint:

var action = function (err, collection) {
    // Locate all the entries using find
    collection.find({'a':'b'}).toArray(function(err, results) {
        /* whatever you want to do with the results in node such as the following
             res.render('home', {
                 'title': 'MyTitle',
                 'data': results
             });
        */
    });
};

mongoose.connection.db.collection('question', action);

Something else that was not obvious, to me at least, was that the when using Mongoose's third parameter to avoid replacing the actual collection with a new one with the same name, the new Schema(...) is actually only a placeholder, and doesn't interfere with the exisitng schema so

var User = mongoose.model('User', new Schema({ url: String, text: String, id: Number}, { collection : 'users' }));   // collection name;
User.find({}, function(err, data) { console.log(err, data, data.length);});

works fine and returns all fields - even if the actual (remote) Schema contains none of these fields. Mongoose will still want it as new Schema(...), and a variable almost certainly won't hack it.

Are you sure you've connected to the db? (I ask because I don't see a port specified)

try:

mongoose.connection.on("open", function(){
  console.log("mongodb is connected!!");
});

Also, you can do a "show collections" in mongo shell to see the collections within your db - maybe try adding a record via mongoose and see where it ends up?

From the look of your connection string, you should see the record in the "test" db.

Hope it helps!