I know that Mongoose populates the _id field automatically with an ObjectID if none is given and that you can overwrite the _id when constructing and instance of the model.
What I want: create the _id from other fields in a transparent way. I want to omit the _id field when creating an instance of the model and then have a function called which fills it. This function should be declared on a Schema level and whoever uses the model does not know that _id was filled by the function instead of Mongoose.
Is there a hook or a parameter of the Schema constructor I missed?
Mongoose 3.0.x
Let's make this more concrete. Imagine a BlogPost and I want to create nice URLs by slugging the title. In order to map the slug to a Mongo Object I hash the slug and turn it into a ObjectID to leverage it's benefits. Now what I'm looking for is a transparent method which allows me to create an instance of BlogPost by only passing in title and have the slug and _id property automatically generated.
use a setter on title which slugifies and idifies for you: https://gist.github.com/3658511
If you want to make sure your code is only executed once the object is created, check for this.isNew inside the setter.
Is this what you are looking for?
You could define a function to create the _id before the model is saved, as in: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/middleware.html
If this middleware is called after Mongoose creates the _id by default (my guess is it's not), you could tell Mongoose to not create an _id, with the _id option. http://mongoosejs.com/docs/guide.html#options