Can I determine if a string is a MongoDB ObjectID?

Question

I am doing MongoDB lookups by converting a string to BSON. Is there a way for me to determine if the string I have is a valid ObjectID for Mongo before doing the conversion?

Answer 1

The only way i found is to create a new ObjectId with the value i want to check, if the input is equal to the output, the id is valid :

function validate(id) {
    var valid = false;
    try
    {
        if(id == new mongoose.Types.ObjectId(""+id))
           valid = true;

    }
    catch(e)
    {
       valid = false;
    }
    return valid;
}

> validate(null)
false
> validate(20)
false
> validate("abcdef")
false
> validate("5ad72b594c897c7c38b2bf71")
true