In my recent posts I’ve been trying to learn a little about MongoDB, and the API. Whilst trying to insert data into a MongoDB database, I got an error; and, since I couldn’t really find anything about it on the internet, I thought I’d add something.

Here’s the code that I initially (and incorrectly) tried to use to insert a record:

            var newData = new MyData()
            {
                SomeDate = myDate,
                Text = "hello"
            };
            var document = BsonDocument.Create(newData);

            var collection = _db.GetCollection<BsonDocument>("testcollection");
            await collection.InsertOneAsync(document);

            return newData.Id.ToString();

If you execute the code above, you’ll get the following error:

System.ArgumentException: ‘.NET type MyApp.Entities.MyData cannot be mapped to BsonType.Document. ‘

In fact, the issue is caused because you need to convert the data into a BSON document first; like so:

            var newData = new MyData()
            {
                SomeDate = myDate,
                Text = "hello"
            };
            var bson = newData.ToBsonDocument();
            var document = BsonDocument.Create(bson);            

            var collection = _db.GetCollection<BsonDocument>("testcollection");
            await collection.InsertOneAsync(document);

            return newData.Id.ToString();