mongodb searching for date strings in a range - mongodb

Question

I have a DB with entries in Universal Time such as this:
{"problemDate": "Mon May 11 2020 13:09:14 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)"},
{"problemDate": "Mon May 11 2020 13:09:14 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)"},
{"problemDate": "Mon Dec 07 2020 14:08:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)"},
{"problemDate": "Tue May 12 2020 00:18:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)"}
Although, I am trying to query for a range of dates, my db has around 2k entries with dates ranging from May to December. If I query for dates greater than December 7th, my return still shows dates such as Mon May 11. I believe this is because my dates are just strings. I was wondering if there is a work around to this. Any help would be appreciated.
This was my query:db.problem.find({"problemDate":{ $gte:("Mon Dec 07 2020 14:08:24 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)") }});

Answer 1

You could try an update on the collection to convert the dates from string to IsoDate.
The following script it's designed to run in a mongo shell, and it's assumed that you have selected the database (use databasename) and your collection name is 'datestest':
db.getCollection('datestest').find({}).forEach( function(item){
if (typeof(item.problemDate) == "string"){
print(item.problemDate);
item.problemDate = new Date(item.problemDate);
db.getCollection('datestest').save(item);
}
}
);
You can first save the "bad dates" to a different collection to check the update it's all right, just replace the save item with a diffrerent collection name:
db.getCollection('datestest_check').save(item);