How can I convert a mongdb UUID() to a string?

Question

I want to generate a random UUID String, and insert it into mongo collection. How can I do it? I do not want a hex. I need the dashes. I tried UUID().toString(), and it does not seem to work

Answer 1

According to your own comment, UUID().toString() includes the method name. Your solution includes the quotation marks. To get rid of those, you could use the following:

UUID().toString().split('"')[1]

Explanation:

• UUID().toString() will give a string containing UUID("00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000000").
• The split('"') will split the string, dividing by the quotation marks, into an array, which is ['UUID(', '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000', ')'].
• [1] selects the second element from that array, which is your UUID as a string.

Answer 2

The only way I was able to make this work was to use

UUID()
  .toString('hex')
  .replace(/^(.{8})(.{4})(.{4})(.{4})(.{12})$/, '$1-$2-$3-$4-$5')

because I get UUID().hex is not a function error when I try UUID().hex() and UUID().toString() only returns gibberish.

Answer 3

To generate uuid in mongo db shell as a string, you need to call uuid() the following way. First import uuid/v4 library using require statement (require statement will work on mongo shell as well).

const uuid = require('uuid/v4');

print(uuid());

// output : "df5679ea-34bf-48c0-9e9c-8c92686a7f56"


db.users.insert({name: "username", uuid: uuid()});