Mongo database: search for text escaping some characters - regex

Question

I'm looking for a way to search text on my MongoDB escaping some characters.
For example:
In the collection contacts there is a document with "john.doe" in field name
{
_id: ID
...
name : "john.doe",
...
}
("john.doe" could be "j.ohndoe" or "j.o.h.n.d.o.e" or "jo.hn.do.e", you name it)
I want to find it searching for "johndoe", not only "john.doe" (ignoring "."). It would be great to use directly findOne.
Is there a way to do this?
Thank you very much :)

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible using purely MongoDB queries. However, you can you MongoDB map reduce to get filtered documents or perform such actions on client side. I know it will not be an elegant solution but at least will work.
Please see https://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/map-reduce/
Example
function findByKey(key)
{
var keys =
db.contacts.mapReduce(function(){
var re = /\./igm;
var txt = this.name.replace(re,"");
var re = new RegExp(u_name);
if(re.exec(txt)!= null)
{
emit(1, this._id);
}
}, function(k, v){
return {keys: v};
},
{
out:{inline:true},
scope: {u_name:key}
});
if(keys.results.length > 0)
{
var arKeys = keys.results[0].value.keys;
return db.contacts.find({_id:{$in: arKeys}});
}
else
{
return null;
}
};
var data = findByKey("john doe");
After running above script, variable data will hold all documents having "john doe" including j.ohn.doe or john.doe so ignoring all periods.