Mongodb Object Id not being inserted as an objectId in laravel

[austineonyema]

i have looked everywhere and can't seem to find how to insert mongodb objectId into the db without them being inserted as strings while working with database, i can't create a new one either, it inserts as strings and this has really imocted my work, as i've been stuck on it for over a week now, all methods i try seem to only insert it as a string or do not at all, i need to insert this objectId because the former developer had setup the db to use objectId references which i then use to make lookup aggregration requests, they've done a lot of inserts and i cannot redesign the db to fit with the constraints of php/laravel, as the former project was done with node express...how do i go about this, i am really fed up at this time...