A Mongoose model is created from a schema and provides an interface for interacting with a MongoDB collection.

For example:

const user = await User.findOne({ email: 'john@example.com' });

Here:

• User is the Mongoose model.
• findOne() is a model query method.
• The result is a Mongoose document or null.

A Mongoose document represents an individual database record and provides methods such as save() and toObject().

Models are also used for creating, updating, and deleting documents.

const user = new User({
  name: 'John Doe',
  email: 'john@example.com',
  password: 'hashed-password'
});

await user.save();

console.log(user._id);