What is a Mongoose model property that contains 'ref' but does not specify type?
The answer was that the model schemas do not stand on their own, but are passed to a model "factory", which gives them the property types they need.
Thus from that factory the following snippet (below). I looked into the documentation for mongoose-autopopulateand I don't see what autopopulate=truemeans.
new: function(name, properties, statics, methods, schemaMods) {// Add default definition to properties with references and load reference schemasObject.keys(properties).forEach(function(key) { var modifiedProperty = (property) => { if (property.ref) { property.autopopulate = true; property.type = mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId; } return property; }; if (Array.isArray(properties[key]) && properties[key].length === 1) { properties[key][0] = modifiedProperty(properties[key][0]); } else { properties[key] = modifiedProperty(properties[key]); }});