Beginning CouchDB ■ ■ ■ JOE LENNON Beginning CouchDB Copyright © 2009 by Joe Lennon All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4302-7236-6 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-7237-3 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. President and Publisher: Paul Manning Lead Editor: Frank Pohlmann Technical Reviewer: Paul Davis Editorial Board: Clay Andres, Steve Anglin, Mark Beckner, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Michelle Lowman, Matthew Moodie, Jeffrey Pepper, Frank Pohlmann, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh Coordinating Editor: Anne Collett Copy Editor: Kim Wimpsett Compositor: Kimberly Burton Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC Artist: April Milne Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer- sbm.com, or visit http://www.springeronline.com. For information on translations, please e-mail [email protected], or visit http://www.apress.com. Apress and friends of ED books may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use. eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. 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You will need to answer questions pertaining to this book in order to successfully download the code. ii To the memory of my uncle, John, and my grandfather, Seán iii Contents at a Glance ■ABOUT THE AUTHOR.............................................................................................................. xiii ■ABOUT THE TECHNICAL REVIEWER ......................................................................................... xv ■ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... xvii ■INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................... xix ■CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO COUCHDB ................................................................................3 ■CHAPTER 2: INSTALLING COUCHDB ON LINUX ........................................................................11 ■CHAPTER 3: INSTALLING COUCHDB ON MAC OS X ..................................................................31 ■CHAPTER 4: CREATING YOUR FIRST COUCHDB DATABASE......................................................49 ■CHAPTER 5: USING FUTON: THE COUCHDB ADMINISTRATION INTERFACE ...............................63 ■CHAPTER 6: INTRODUCTION TO JSON.....................................................................................87 ■CHAPTER 7: INTRODUCTION TO COUCHDB VIEWS .................................................................107 ■CHAPTER 8: MAP/REDUCE....................................................................................................125 ■CHAPTER 9: ADVANCED COUCHDB VIEWS ............................................................................143 ■CHAPTER 10: DEVELOPING COUCHDB APPLICATIONS WITH COUCHAPP................................163 ■CHAPTER 11: DEVELOPING APPLICATIONS WITH COUCHDB ..................................................185 ■CHAPTER 12: ADVANCED COUCHDB TOPICS .........................................................................211 ■CHAPTER 13: MECHANICS OF COUCHDB DEPLOYMENT.........................................................241 ■APPENDIX A: COUCHDB API REFERENCE ..............................................................................251 ■APPENDIX B: HTTP AND CURL REFERENCE...........................................................................283 ■INDEX ..................................................................................................................................289 v ■ CONTENTS Contents About the Author .....................................................................................................xiii About the Technical Reviewer .................................................................................. xv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ xvii Introduction............................................................................................................. xix Part 1: Getting Started................................................................................................1 ■Chapter 1: Introduction To CouchDB .......................................................................3 What Is CouchDB? .............................................................................................................3 CouchDB: The Story So Far................................................................................................4 Document-Oriented Databases..........................................................................................5 CouchDB Documents .........................................................................................................6 The Javascript View Engine...............................................................................................7 Restful HTTP API ................................................................................................................7 Futon..................................................................................................................................8 So...Now What? .................................................................................................................9 ■Chapter 2: Installing CouchDB on Linux ................................................................11 Installing CouchDB on Ubuntu Linux 8.10........................................................................11 Installing CouchDB on Fedora Linux Using Yum ..............................................................16 Building CouchDB (and Prerequisites) from Source Code ...............................................21 Building Erlang ....................................................................................................................................... 23 Building Libcurl....................................................................................................................................... 24 vii ■ CONTENTS CONTENTS Building Icu............................................................................................................................................. 25 Building Spidermonkey .......................................................................................................................... 25 Building Subversion................................................................................................................................ 26 Building CouchDB................................................................................................................................... 27 ■Chapter 3: Installing CouchDB on Mac OS X..........................................................31 Installing the Xcode Developer Tools...............................................................................31 Installing Macports ..........................................................................................................36 Installing CouchDB...........................................................................................................42 CouchDBx: a One-Click CouchDB Package for Mac OS X ................................................47 ■Chapter 4: Creating Your First CouchDB Database................................................49 Tools of the Trade............................................................................................................49 HTTP Requests.................................................................................................................50 JSON Response ...............................................................................................................50 Using curl.........................................................................................................................51 Creating Your First Database...........................................................................................51 Creating Documents in Your Contacts Database .............................................................54 Getting Started with CouchDB Views...............................................................................57 Summary .........................................................................................................................59