Difference between "id" and "_id" fields in MongoDB
MongodbMongoidMongodb Problem Overview
Is there any difference between using the field ID or _ID from a MongoDB document?
I am asking this, because I usually use "_id", however I saw this sort({id:-1}) in the documentation: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Optimizing+Object+IDs#OptimizingObjectIDs-Sortbyidtosortbyinsertiontime
EDIT
Turns out the docs were wrong.
Mongodb Solutions
Solution 1 - Mongodb
I expect it's just a typo in the documentation. The _id field is primary key for every document. It's called _id and is also accessible via id. Attempting to use an id key may result in a illegal ObjectId format error.
That section is just indicating that the automatically generated ObjectIDs start with a timestamp so it's possible to sort your documents automatically. This is pretty cool since the _id is automatically indexed in every collection. See http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Object+IDs for more information. Specifically under "BSON ObjectID Specification".
> A BSON ObjectID is a 12-byte value consisting of a 4-byte timestamp (seconds since epoch), a 3-byte machine id, a 2-byte process id, and a 3-byte counter. Note that the timestamp and counter fields must be stored big endian unlike the rest of BSON.
Solution 2 - Mongodb
The _id field is the default field for Bson ObjectId's and it is,by default, indexed.
_id and id are not the same. You may also choose to add a field called id if you want, but it will not be index unless you add an index.
It is just a typo in the docs.
Solution 3 - Mongodb
id is an alias for _id in mongoid.id would return the _id of the document. https://github.com/mongodb/mongoid/blob/master/lib/mongoid/fields.rb#L47
if the _id field is not specified an ObjectedId is generated automatically.
Solution 4 - Mongodb
My two cents:
The _id field
MongoDB assigns an _id field to each document and assigns primary index on it. There're ways by which we can apply secondary indices as well. By default, MongoDB creates values for the _id field of type ObjectID. This value is defined in BSON spec and it's structured this way:
> ObjectID (12 bytes HEX string) = Date (4 bytes, a timestamp value representing number of seconds since the Unix epoch) + MAC address (3 bytes) + PID (2 bytes) + Counter (3 bytes)