Not getting a file that exists with mongofiles' get_id command

Working with Data Developer Tools
1

I’m completely new to MongoDB, and I’m only working with it because I’m following a course on developing a microservices architecture.

For context, I have a db mp3s with collections fs.chunks and fs.files. I know there’s a file in it because when I run db.fs.files.find() I get:

[
  {
    _id: ObjectId('6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e'),
    chunkSize: 261120,
    length: Long('84261'),
    uploadDate: ISODate('2025-06-11T02:24:31.416Z')
  }
]

However, when I run the command mongofiles --db mp3s --prefix fs -l test.mp3 get_id 'ObjectId(""6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e"")', to the retrieve the file and name the output as test.mp3, I keep getting these logs

2025-06-13T22:45:06.590-0500    connected to: mongodb://localhost/
2025-06-13T22:45:06.608-0500    Failed: no such file with _id: ObjectId(6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e)

I know this is a pretty common question cus I’ve tried several methods in representing the ObjectId such as:

1) mongofiles --db mp3s --prefix fs -l test.mp3 get_id 'ObjectId("6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e")' 
2) mongofiles --db mp3s --prefix fs -l test.mp3 get_id 'ObjectId(`"6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e`")'
3) mongofiles --db=mp3s --prefix=fs -l test.mp3  get_id  '{ "_id": "ObjectId("6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e")"}'
4) mongofiles --db=mp3s --prefix=fs -l test.mp3  get_id  '{ "$oid": "ObjectId("6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e")"}'
5) mongofiles --db=mp3s --prefix=fs -l test.mp3  get_id  '{ "$id": "ObjectId("6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e")"}'
6) mongofiles --db=mp3s --prefix fs get_id --local=test.mp3 '{"_id": "6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e"}'

Literally fell asleep on my keyboard while trying different ways lol.

For further debugging purposes, I ran mongofiles --db=mp3s --prefix=fs list, and I can affirm the file is there because I’m getting

2025-06-14T10:49:27.023-0500    connected to: mongodb://localhost/
        84261

I’m wondering if this is a case where mongofiles only acknowledges files with filenames, as mentioned in this previous post

NB. I started a similar discussion on Reddit, but unfortunately, I wasn’t getting anywhere

2

Hi @romeil_N_A

Per the documentation and the examples the get_id uses extended JSON format.

# prefix is not needed for this example as fs is the default
mongofiles --db mp3s --prefix fs -l test.mp3 get_id '{"$oid":"6848e8df124ab0ba0211ae4e"}'