Search for MongoDB records containing a certain string - mongodb

Question

I have a MongoDB database full of tweets that I've gathered using the tweepy API, and I want to be able to search on a web application a hashtag and it shows the tweets containing that hashtag.
Currently, I have created a list with the DB records in, and iterating through that list to display them all, but now I want to refine the search so the user can choose what they see. I have the users search saved into a variable and I have tried the following ideas, but none seem to be working.
My first idea was to just pass in the variable and hope for the best
def display():
input = request.form['input'] # setting variable for user input
# Set up Mongo Client
client = MongoClient("mongo.user/pass")
# Accessing database
db = client.tweets
# acessing a collection
posts = db.posts
data = list(posts.find(input))
return render_template('results.html', posts_info=data)
With this, I get a TypeError, which I somewhat expected as I didn't expect it to be this easy
After some reading online, I tried using a regex.
def display():
input = request.form['input'] # setting variable for user input
# Set up Mongo Client
client = MongoClient("mongo.user/pass")
# Accessing database
db = client.tweets
# acessing a collection
posts = db.posts
data = list(posts.find({Tweet: {$regex: input}}))
return render_template('results.html', posts_info=data)
This also didn't work so I tried to hard code the regex to see if it was the user input variable creating issues
def display():
input = request.form['input'] # setting variable for user input
# Set up Mongo Client
client = MongoClient("mongo.user/pass")
# Accessing database
db = client.tweets
# acessing a collection
posts = db.posts
data = list(posts.find({Tweet: {$regex: "GoT"}}))
return render_template('results.html', posts_info=data)
With both these methods, I get syntax errors at the start of the regex expression, and flags the $ before regex
Error message that I get reads:
File "pathToWebApp/webApp.py", line 71
data = list(posts.find({Tweet: {$regex: input}}))
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
I've never worked with MongoDB or used regexs so I'm at a complete loss here. I've scoured the mongo docs but nothing I've tried works so any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

By the looks of it you might need to wrap the $regex key in quotes as well:
data = list(posts.find({Tweet: {"$regex": input}}))