Sometimes it may be necessary (particular when modifying a schema), to bypass mongoose schema constraints and access a mongoose database through the native mongodb driver.
Generally, this is as simple as accessing Model.collection
However, there is a caveat when running find() queries. All native driver documentation suggests that Model.collection.find({}) should return a cursor, but this is not the case with Mongoose.
Running Model.collection.find({}).toArray(function(err, data){}) will throw an error
TypeError: Cannot call method 'toArray' of undefined
because find() will return undefined
Instead, you must pass a callback to find() which accepts the cursor as the second argument. Here is an example:
Model.collection.find({}, function(err, cursor) {
cursor.toArray(function(err, data){
// process data array
})
})
