How to protect the password field in Mongoose/MongoDB so it won't return in a query when I populate collections?

Question

Suppose I have two collections/schemas. One is the Users Schema with username and password fields, then, I have a Blogs Schema that has a reference to the Users Schema in the author field. If I use Mongoose to do something like

Blogs.findOne({...}).populate("user").exec()

I will have the Blog document and the user populated too, but how do I prevent Mongoose/MongoDB from returning the password field? The password field is hashed but it shouldn't be returned.

I know I can omit the password field and return the rest of the fields in a simple query, but how do I do that with populate. Also, is there any elegant way to do this?

Also, in some situations I do need to get the password field, like when the user wants to login or change the password.

Answer 1

You can change the default behavior at the schema definition level using the select attribute of the field:

password: { type: String, select: false }

Then you can pull it in as needed in find and populate calls via field selection as '+password'. For example:

Users.findOne({_id: id}).select('+password').exec(...);