Search query using Regex in Mongodb

Question

I am trying to fetch results from mongodb using regular expressions. For example, while searching for a username amitverma , I want to be able to get that result if i type amit in the searchbox.

I have searched around the internet for a solution and everybody seems to have got it working by writing code like this:

var searchterm = req.body.name;
        collection.find(
            { "username": new RegExp('/.*' + searchterm + '.*/') },
            [ 'username', 'status' ], 
            function(e, docs){
                console.log(e);
                console.log(docs);
                res.writeHead(200, {'content-type': 'text/json' });
                res.write( JSON.stringify({ 'docs' : docs }) );
                res.end('\n');
            }
        );

I still cannot get it to work. It gives me an empty array. Also, after replaceing {username: searchterm} to { "username": new RegExp('/.*' + searchterm + '.*/') } , I can't even get results for the string amitverma which means this regex thing is failing.

Answer 1

Try removing the slashes from the RegExp() constructor:

{ "username": new RegExp('.*' + searchterm + '.*') },

The slashes should not be there, unless you are searching for two literal forward slashes.