codeigniter - Store _Id as object or string in MongoDB?

Question

I am developing an API using Codeigniter and MongoDB. In this system I am saving the full name and _ID of users that the selected user is following.

What is best to do regarding the _Id? Store it as an object or as a string? If I store it as an object I need to convert it to string when echoing out followers otherwise the output looks strange.

My question is really. Is it ok to store the _Id as a string rather than an object? What is the downside of storing as string?

Thankful for all input!

Answer 1

Performance for requests (and updates) are really better with objectid. More over, objectid are quite small in space.

From the official doc :

BSON includes a binary data datatype for storing byte arrays. Using this will make the id values, and their respective keys in the _id index, twice as small.

here are 2 links that can help you : - http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Optimizing+Object+IDs - http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Object+IDs