Question

I’m using this code to insert (or update if already existing) a new user to the databse:

   emailAddress = self.request.params.get('emailaddress')
    googleRefreshToken = self.request.params.get('googlerefreshtoken')

    # upsert new user
    postData = {"emailAddress" : emailAddress,
        "googleRefreshToken" : googleRefreshToken}
    newPost = self.request.db.users.update( { 'emailAddress' : emailAddress }, postData, True );


    return json.dumps( newPost, default=json_util.default)

I’m assuming that update() should return the objects _id or even the object itself…but it always returns null even though the upsert works correctly. Why is it returning null and how can I get it to return the _id or object itself?

Answer 1

As described in the docs, if you include safe=True in your parameters to update, the response to lastError is returned, otherwise it returns None. If you want the _id of the document updated, you’ll either have to query for it separately or use find_and_modify instead of update.