0

I've been trying since long to figure out the best way to store user-defined date and time in MongoDB using mongoose library. What I mean by user-defined is that it could be a date/time from future or past. I don't want to store time stamp or current date. In some cases, I just need to store Time in 24hr Format because of some calculations and in some cases, I just want to store Date. I am using mongo and mongoose for the first time and its hard to find the correct way doing it. Although I have tried couple of methods which are as follows:

  1. I stored the date and time in String format which is the easiest way of storing and retrieving I guess but the problem is I have to work alot in order to perform calculations and updating records back. Also, high chance of inaccuracy.

  2. I tried the Date Schematype but almost everyother question & tutorial I found on goolgle/stack is just explaing the current date or timestamp problem. I tried using it but then I encounter a strange problem like

I am posting Date data in this format through a Post service, Though I just need the time in this case but it was prompting me a format error which make sense as well so I decided to capture the date just to avoid it, 

"wakeupTime" : "2018/05/08 04:30:00",
"sleepTime" : "2018/05/07 19:30:00"

This is how I am recieving and creating my data

wakeupTime : new Date(req.body.wakeupTime),
sleepTime : new Date(req.body.sleepTime),

But It is storing this data in db with its own values I am not sure why

"wakeupTime": "2018-05-07T18:30:00.000Z",
 "sleepTime": "2018-05-07T09:30:00.000Z",

In schema defination I have my wake up time and sleep time like this

wakeupTime: {
        type: Date
    },
    sleepTime : {
        type: Date
    }

I know that dates could be very tricky and hard to grasp in the first place and I am very much sure that I am missing some pieces of this puzzle. I would really appreciate any help which could lead me to a accurate solution.

Improve this question
6
  • 1
    It's doing that because you asked it to. The field types are Date so that is what it converts the string to. You really don't want to change that. Strings are bad news for queries and all kinds of usefulness that is generally applicable to dates. So you would be killing that, and wasting a lot of space in your database at the same time. Date objects are good. Learn to accept that. Commented May 8, 2018 at 12:24
  • 1
    If you just want "time" then just store that, and it begs the question of why are you sending date strings? Time during the day is probably best stored as the milliseconds in a day, or at less granular units where you don't need that level of detail. In which case it's a Number, and that is what you should be sending. The actual format is a matter of opinion, but you certainly don't want a Date, and nor should you be sending one. If you need to get time of day from a Date object, then that's a different question. Commented May 8, 2018 at 12:29
  • Make sense actually, Its just that I wasn't able to find these questions may be searching with the wrong search strings. Commented May 8, 2018 at 12:48
  • No problem. Sometimes that's also what we're here for. Commented May 8, 2018 at 12:51
  • I suggest you to use momentJs library with mongoose virtuals to get and store wake up and sleep time in the desired format. for example in your schema definition let's assume that you define the wakeup field as number, you could create a virtual field called wakeupTime to format wakeup into time format and converting it into number when you are storing data Commented May 8, 2018 at 13:08
Related questions
1686
Convert a Unix timestamp to time in JavaScript
1303
How to get current time and date in Android
912
DateTime2 vs DateTime in SQL Server
Load 5 more related questions Show fewer related questions

0

Reset to default

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.