How can you populate something that is not in the schema? Mongoose is throwing the error Cannot populate path 'example' because it is not in your schema. Set the 'strictPopulate' option to false to override.

I tried adding strictPopulate: false to the Schema and the query. Both didn't work.

How can you populate something that is not in the schema? Mongoose is throwing the error Cannot populate path 'example' because it is not in your schema. Set the 'strictPopulate' option to false to override.

I tried adding strictPopulate: false to the Schema and the query. Both didn't work.

• javascript
• node.js
• mongodb
• mongoose

• You can just create a virtual, this allows you to populate a value missing in your schema – Nikita Mazur Commented Sep 3, 2021 at 10:45
• My schema is kind of dynamic. So, I don't think virtuals will solve the problem. – illiteratewriter Commented Sep 3, 2021 at 10:54
• If its dynamic you can try using Discriminators) – Nikita Mazur Commented Sep 3, 2021 at 11:30

2 Answers 2

It seems this works for me

document.populate([{ path: keyString, strictPopulate: false }]);

Suppose you have a product orderItem inside orderList. You can't populate producy when reading orderList, instead you can use:

.populate({ path: "orderItems", populate: "product" });