select: false makes field values not accessible using "this.field_name"

When using a plugin (I’m using mongoose-user) I’ve noticed that from methods defined in schema.methods inside a plugin (in my example mongoose-user.js) it is not possible to get the value of fields that have been marked as “select: false” in the model (in my example user.js)

So if you apply “select: false” to a field it won’t be accesible from a plugin. By removing this property or setting it to “select: true” the field is accessible again.

Updated info: I’ve also tested moving the plugin logic to user.js and the problem persists. I can’t read values using this.field from user.js methods too.

Sample using a plugin: (see line console.log('mongoose-use hashed_password', this.hashed_password); )

// model/user.js
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var Schema = mongoose.Schema;

var userPlugin = require('mongoose-user');

var UserSchema = new Schema({
  name: { type: String, default: ''  },
  email: { type: String, default: '' },
  hashed_password: { type: String, default: '', select: false },
});

UserSchema.plugin(userPlugin, {});

mongoose.model('User', UserSchema)

// mongoose-user.js

module.exports = userPlugin

function userPlugin (schema, options) {
var crypto = require('crypto');

  schema.methods.authenticate = function(plainText) {
    // THIS CONSOLE.LOG CAN'T ACCES TO this.hashed_password value
   // IT ALWAYS RETURN 'undefined'.    
    console.log('mongoose-use hashed_password', this.hashed_password);
    return this.encryptPassword(plainText) === this.hashed_password
  }

schema.methods.encryptPassword = function (password) {
    if (!password) return '';
    return crypto.createHmac('sha1', this.salt).update(password).digest('hex');
   }

}

[connor11528]

you can override the select false fields with select for your queries (SO thread here)

// add back the password field for this query
var query = User.findOne({
    email: req.body.email
}).select('_id email +password');

query.exec(function(err, user){
    // user with included password field

});

My user schema in this case looked like:

var userSchema = new Schema({
    email: {type: String, required: true, unique: true },
    password: {type: String, required: true, select: false },
    admin: Boolean
});

[kesarion]

@vkarpov15 Would it make sense to have access to a this.select() method to selectively request the missing fields only when necessary?

For example:

ResourceSchema
    .virtual('voted')
    .get(function() {
        if (global.user) {
            this.select( 'voters');
            return _.includes(this.voters, global.user._id);
        }
        return null;
    });

Voters would hypothetically contain the ids of users who have voted (some resource). Let’s say we don’t want to select them by default, but want to check if the logged in user has already voted (set in global in the example).

I suppose it would be less efficient, needing another query to the database, but in some cases where performance isn’t critical it might make sense to know that’s automatically taken care of.