Find objects between two dates MongoDB

Question

I've been playing around storing tweets inside mongodb, each object looks like this:

{
"_id" : ObjectId("4c02c58de500fe1be1000005"),
"contributors" : null,
"text" : "Hello world",
"user" : {
    "following" : null,
    "followers_count" : 5,
    "utc_offset" : null,
    "location" : "",
    "profile_text_color" : "000000",
    "friends_count" : 11,
    "profile_link_color" : "0000ff",
    "verified" : false,
    "protected" : false,
    "url" : null,
    "contributors_enabled" : false,
    "created_at" : "Sun May 30 18:47:06 +0000 2010",
    "geo_enabled" : false,
    "profile_sidebar_border_color" : "87bc44",
    "statuses_count" : 13,
    "favourites_count" : 0,
    "description" : "",
    "notifications" : null,
    "profile_background_tile" : false,
    "lang" : "en",
    "id" : 149978111,
    "time_zone" : null,
    "profile_sidebar_fill_color" : "e0ff92"
},
"geo" : null,
"coordinates" : null,
"in_reply_to_user_id" : 149183152,
"place" : null,
"created_at" : "Sun May 30 20:07:35 +0000 2010",
"source" : "web",
"in_reply_to_status_id" : {
    "floatApprox" : 15061797850
},
"truncated" : false,
"favorited" : false,
"id" : {
    "floatApprox" : 15061838001
}

How would I write a query which checks the *created_at* and finds all objects between 18:47 and 19:00? Do I need to update my documents so the dates are stored in a specific format?

Thanks

Answer 1

Querying for a Date Range (Specific Month or Day) in the MongoDB Cookbook has a very good explanation on the matter, but below is something I tried out myself and it seems to work.

items.save({
    name: "example",
    created_at: new Date(2010, 4, 30)
})
items.find({
    created_at: {
        $gte: new Date(2010, 4, 29),
        $lt: new Date(2010, 5, 1)
    }
})
=> { "_id" : ObjectId("4c0791e2b9ec877893f3363b"), "name" : "example", "created_at" : "Sun May 30 2010 00:00:00 GMT+0300 (EEST)" }

Based on my experiments you will need to serialize your dates into a format that MongoDB supports, because the following gave undesired search results.

items.save({
    name: "example",
    created_at: "Sun May 30 18.49:00 +0000 2010"
})
items.find({
    created_at: {
        $gte:"Mon May 30 18:47:00 +0000 2015",
        $lt: "Sun May 30 20:40:36 +0000 2010"
    }
})
=> { "_id" : ObjectId("4c079123b9ec877893f33638"), "name" : "example", "created_at" : "Sun May 30 18.49:00 +0000 2010" }

In the second example no results were expected, but there was still one gotten. This is because a basic string comparison is done.

Answer 2

MongoDB actually stores the millis of a date as an int(64), as prescribed by http://bsonspec.org/#/specification

However, it can get pretty confusing when you retrieve dates as the client driver will instantiate a date object with its own local timezone. The JavaScript driver in the mongo console will certainly do this.

So, if you care about your timezones, then make sure you know what it's supposed to be when you get it back. This shouldn't matter so much for the queries, as it will still equate to the same int(64), regardless of what timezone your date object is in (I hope). But I'd definitely make queries with actual date objects (not strings) and let the driver do its thing.