mongodb - How to change the type of a field?

Question

I am trying to change the type of a field from within the mongo shell.

I am doing this...

db.meta.update(
  {'fields.properties.default': { $type : 1 }}, 
  {'fields.properties.default': { $type : 2 }}
)

But it's not working!

Answer 1

The only way to change the $type of the data is to perform an update on the data where the data has the correct type.

In this case, it looks like you're trying to change the $type from 1 (double) to 2 (string).

So simply load the document from the DB, perform the cast (new String(x)) and then save the document again.

If you need to do this programmatically and entirely from the shell, you can use the find(...).forEach(function(x) {}) syntax.

---

In response to the second comment below. Change the field bad from a number to a string in collection foo.

db.foo.find( { 'bad' : { $type : 1 } } ).forEach( function (x) {   
  x.bad = new String(x.bad); // convert field to string
  db.foo.save(x);
});