Mongodb Object Id not being inserted as an objectId in laravel

[austineonyema]

i have looked everywhere and can't seem to find how to insert mongodb objectId into the db without them being inserted as strings while working with database, i can't create a new one either, it inserts as strings and this has really imocted my work, as i've been stuck on it for over a week now, all methods i try seem to only insert it as a string or do not at all, i need to insert this objectId because the former developer had setup the db to use objectId references which i then use to make lookup aggregration requests, they've done a lot of inserts and i cannot redesign the db to fit with the constraints of php/laravel, as the former project was done with node express...how do i go about this, i am really fed up at this time...

[zigzagdev]

@austineonyema

Hey — I feel your pain. This usually happens because Laravel is inserting exactly what you pass in (a PHP string), and MongoDB won’t “auto-cast” it to an ObjectId for you.

To store an actual ObjectId, you must pass a MongoDB\BSON\ObjectId instance (or define a cast/mutator that converts strings to ObjectIds before insert/update).

Ex(Insert & Update)

use MongoDB\BSON\ObjectId;

Model::create([
  'product_cache_id' => new ObjectId($idString),
]);

// or update
$m->product_cache_id = new ObjectId($idString);
$m->save();

if you want to querying by _id , try this.

Model::where('_id', new ObjectId($idString))->first();

If ObjectId casting isn’t available in your version, a custom setter/mutator that wraps new ObjectId($value) works the same.

Also, note that MongoDB will only auto-generate an ObjectId for the document _id field when you don’t supply one — it won’t automatically convert other fields from string to ObjectId.

Hope this helps !! 🙌