Change _id Type

You can easily change the type of the _id field by doing:

class SomeChangedID {
  @prop()
  public _id!: string; // change the type of _id to string
}

The example above sets the _id type to be a string, but does not provide a default function, so the _id property needs to be always set manually before saving / inserting a document, use the default option to set a function to generate a new id everytime, be careful to not forget that using default: fn() will only call the function once at scope time instead of everytime a new document is created.

class SomeUUIDv4 {
  @prop({ required: true, default: () => uuidv4() })
  public _id!: string;
}

The _id property can also be disabled for subdocuments, with the prop option _id: false for the field in the class that uses the subdocument, or the schema option _id, but note that the schema-option does not disable _id if it is not a sub-document.

@modelOptions({ schemaOptions: { _id: false } }) // with the schema option
class WithNoId {
  @prop()
  public someValue: string;
}

class SomeChangedID {
  @prop({ type: WithNoId, _id: false }) // or with the prop-option
  public someField: WithNoId[];
}

With the Base Class

caution

It is recommended to use the manual approach over using Base, because default classes may be removed in the future and dont greatly support extending from each other.

There is also a Base interface typegoose provides, which includes _id and id, which can be used as follows:

interface Something extends Base<string> {} // have the interface to add the types of "Base" to the class
class Something { // have your class, OR
  @prop()
  public _id: string;
}
class Something extends TimeStamps { // have your class extend some other class
  @prop()
  public _id: string;
}

note

The _id property needs to also be included in the actual class, because the default interface Base doesn't change anything at runtime (Base does not use @prop).

Restriction

This method (extending Base) can only be used with types that are in RefType (all of mongoose.Schema.Types should work except Array, Mixed, Boolean).