#9061·rxdb

Dexie.js RxStorage: find() and findOne() with a selector always returns empty or null respectively

Author: mmgfrcsCreated Sep 6, 2026Updated Sep 16, 2026

Labelsneeds test case :mag_right:

Setup

My app is storing their data using RxDB using the Dexie.js storage adapter. The (reduced) setup is as follows:

typescript

import { getRxStorageDexie } from 'rxdb/plugins/storage-dexie';
import { addRxPlugin } from 'rxdb/plugins/core';
import { RxDBDevModePlugin } from 'rxdb/plugins/dev-mode';
import { wrappedValidateAjvStorage } from 'rxdb/plugins/validate-ajv';
import { createRxDatabase } from 'rxdb/plugins/core';
import { RxDBCleanupPlugin } from 'rxdb/plugins/cleanup';
import { RxDBLeaderElectionPlugin } from 'rxdb/plugins/leader-election'

let storage = wrappedValidateAjvStorage({ storage: getRxStorageDexie() });
addRxPlugin(RxDBDevModePlugin);
addRxPlugin(RxDBCleanupPlugin);
addRxPlugin(RxDBLeaderElectionPlugin);

const db = await createRxDatabase({
  name: 'assetTracker',
  storage: storage
});

await db.addCollections({
  // name of the collection
  assets: {
    localDocuments: true,
    // we use the JSON-schema standard
    schema: {
      version: 0,
      primaryKey: 'id',
      type: 'object',
      properties: {
        id: {
          type: 'string',
          maxLength: 100 // <- the primary key must have maxLength
        },
        value: {
          type: 'string',
        }
      },
      required: ['id', 'value']
    }
  }
});

Everything works well, I inserted some data as follows, and I can see them in the browser devtools

typescript

const assetMod = import.meta.glob<ImageMetadata>("/src/assets/**/*.webp", {import: "default"})

for(let assetPth in assetMod) {
    await db.assets.insert({id: assetPth, value: (await assetMod[assetPth]()).src})
}

Calling db.assets.find().exec() finds all of them successfully.

Problem

However, when I wanted to filter them with db.assets.findOne(iid).exec(), where iid is an id that exists, it returns null. Calling db.assets.find(iid).exec() also fails to return any results, resulting in an empty array ([])

Calling the following also returns null

db.assets.findOne({selector: {id: iid}}).exec()
db.assets.findOne({selector: {id: {$eq: iid}}}).exec()

And the same for the find version of the above, returning empty array.

Investigation

My bug-fixing session led me to a discovery. I tried to query a non-existent field it and it returns the raw query as follows:

query: {
  "selector": {
    "it": {
      "$eq": "101.webp"
    },
    "_deleted": {
      "$eq": false
    }
  },
  "limit": 1,
  "skip": 0,
  "sort": [
    {
      "_deleted": "asc"
    },
    {
      "id": "asc"
    }
  ]
}

find() and findOne() tries to find data that is not deleted, where _deleted = false, as the query states. However, in the db, _deleted is a string value of "0"

Source: pubkey/rxdb

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