Auto populate date in MongoDB on insert

Question

MongoDB provides a way to update a date field by the system on update operations: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/operator/update/currentDate/. Is there any equiva

Answer 1

You may try to do a few things if you do not want to handle this from code (I have executed the code below directly on mongo shell):

1. If you want to use $currentDate use update with upsert = true:

   db.orders.update(
      {"_id":ObjectId()},
      {
          $currentDate: {
            createtime: true
          }
      },
      { upsert: true }
   )
   

It will now generate the objectid on app server instead of date/time (unless you use raw command).

2. Use new timestamp or date object directly:

   db.orders.insert(
       "createtime": new Timestamp()
   )
   

The problem with most driver will be then to make sure the new object is created on mondodb server- not on the machine where the code is running. You driver hopefully allows to run raw insert command.

Both will serve the purpose of avoiding time differences/ time sync issue between application server machines.