So far I have this code, that attempts to remove a "document" (a path string, like "./documents/images") from a database, as well as all subdocuments (path strings that start with the same substring, like "./documents/images/flower.jpeg"):
async function removeUserDocument(document) {
const regex = new RegExp(`/^${document}/`);
await db.collection.deleteMany(
{
"document": {
$regex: regex
}
}
);
}
However, it isn't quite working as it doesn't return any results. I tried it with a few different syntaxes I found, but none of them seemed to work. What would be the correct way to formulate this regex?
The way you built your regex is wrong because it includes slashes which would be only part of a regex literal (which you can't use because of your dynamic content), so it should just be:
const regex = new RegExp(`^${document}`);
Also, the code can be simplified, because if you use $regex, you can provide a string which is interpreted as regex, not an actual RegExp (so you wouldn't need to use new RegExp first):
await db.collection.deleteMany({
document: { $regex: `^${document}` }
})
Or, since you already have an actual RegExp, you could also just pass it directly:
await db.collection.deleteMany({
document: regex
})
By the way, this code will break if your document variable has special characters because you don't escape them. I'd suggest using a package such as regexp.escape or, if you are on node.js 24+, the built-in function RegExp.escape.