I've never worked with a database before, but I chose Couch DB because I needed a Json database, and HTTP queries seemed kinda simple. However the documentation assumes a level of knowledge I just don't have.
Assuming I have a database called 'subjects', it seems I can access the json by using GET on
http://localhost:5984/subjects/c6604f65029f1a6a5d565da029001f4c
However beyond that I'm stuck. Ideally I want to be able to:
Access a list of all the keys in the database (not their values)
Access an individual element by its key
Do I need to use views for this? Or can I just set fields in my GET request? Can someone give me a complete example of the request they'd use? Please don't link to the CouchDB documentation, it really hasn't helped me so far.
Views can be used to fetch the data
1) In order to get all keys from the database you can use below view
function(doc) {
if (doc.type=="article")
emit(doc._id,null); //emit(key,value), if you have any other field as key then specify as doc.key e.g doc.
}
You can access this view from browser using below URL
http://<ipaddress>:<port>/databasename/_design/designdocumentname/_view/viewname
e.g :
http://<ipaddress>:<port>/article/_design/articlelist/_view/articlelist
article is the database name,articlelist is name of the design document as well as view.
2) In order to access individual document by key
Below view will return all the articles belonging to a particular department
function(doc) {
if(doc.type == 'article' ) {
emit([doc.departmentname], doc);
}
}
Query this view based on the "department name"
e.g: Get all the articles belonging to "IBU3" department
http://<ipaddress>:<port>/department/_design/categoryname/_view/categoryname?key=[%22IBU3%22]
Related
I'm building an address-book app that uses a back-end Cloudant database. The database stores 3 types of documents:
-> User Profile document
-> Group document
-> User-to-Group Link document
As the names of the document go, there are users in my database, there are groups for users(like whatsapp), and there are link documents for each user to a group (the link document also stores settings/privileges of that user in that group).
My client-side app on login, queries cloudant for the user document, and each group document using view collation over the link documents of that user.
Then using the groups that I have identified above, I find all the other users of that group.
Now, the challenge is that I need to monitor any changes on the group and user documents. I am using pouchdb on the app side, and can invoke the 'changes' API against the ids of all the group and user documents. But the scale of this can be maybe 500 users in each group, and a logged in user being part of 10-50 groups. That multiplied to 1000s of users will become a nightmare for the back-end to support.
Is my scalability concern warranted? Or is this normal for cloudant?
If I understand your schema correctly, you documents of this form:
{
_id: "user:glynn",
type: "user",
name: "Glynn Bird"
}
{
_id: "group:Developers",
type: "group",
name: "Software Developers"
}
{
_id: "user:glynn:developers"
}
In the above example, the primary key's sorting allows a user and all of its memberships to be retrieved by using startkey and endkey parameters do the database's _all_docs endpoint.
This is "scalable" in the sense that if is efficient for Cloudant retrieve data from a primary or secondary index because the index is held in a b-tree so data with adjacent keys is store next to each other. A limit parameter can be used to paginate through larger data sets.
yes the documents are more or less how you've specified.
Link documents are as follows:
{
"_id": <AutoGeneratedID>,
"type": "link",
"user": user_id,
"group": group_id
}
I've written the following view map function:
if(type == "link") {
emit(doc.user, {"_id": doc.user});
emit([doc.user, doc.group], {"_id": doc.group});
emit([doc.group, doc.user], {"_id": doc.user});
}
using the above 3 indexes and include-docs=true, 1st lets me get my logged-in user document, 2nd lets me get all group documents for my logged-in user (using start and end key), and 3rd lets me get all other user documents for a group (using start and end key again).
Fetching the documents is done, but now I need to monitor changes on users of each group, for this, don't I need to query the changes API with array of user ids ? Is there any other way ?
Cloudant retrieve data from a primary or secondary index because the
index is held in a b-tree so data with adjacent keys is store next to
each other
Sorry, I did not understand this statement ?
Thanks.
Part 1.
I recommend to get rid of the "link" type here - it's good for SQL world, but not for CouchDb.
Instead of this, it is better to utilize a benefit of Document Storage, i.e. store user groups in property "Groups" for "User"; and property "Users" for "Group".
With this approach you can set up filtered replication to process only changes of specific groups and these changes will already contain all the users of the group.
I want to notice, that I made an assumption, that number of groups for a user and number of groups is reasonable (hundreds at maximum) and doesn't change frequently.
Part 2.
You can just store ids in these properties and then use Views to "join" other data. Or I was also thinking about other approach (for my use case, but yours is similar):
1) Group contains only ids of users - no views needed.
2) You create a view of each user contacts, i.e. for each user get all users with whom he has mutual groups.
3) Replicate this view to client app.
When user opens a group, values (such as names and pics of contacts are taken from this local "dictionary").
This approach can save some traffic.
Please, let me know what do you think. Because right now I'm working on designing architecture of my solution. Thank you!)
I am developing a simple client for Android which fetches data from a CouchDB database. There will be only one database for all users. The data pull-replicated is filtered by a JS function. Such function (simplified) would be like this:
function(doc,req) {
if (!doc.type || doc.type !='item') { return false; }
if (doc.foo && ... && req.userCtx.bar.indexOf(doc.foo) != -1) { return true; }
...
}
As I have read in the official documentation, _users is a perfect place to set custom fields related to the user. So did I as you can see in the above code (see req.userCtx.bar array).
The problem I am facing is that the object/JSON req.userCtx only contains these fields: db, name and roles.
1. What would be a good alternative to my idea? I am a little bit stuck right now at this point. 2. How can I retrieve the user's data (all fields official and custom)?. 3. Is it correct to add as filter parameter a large array?
NOTE
I am thinking of a messy alternative of adding an array-field in every item which will contain the list with all users allowed to pull such item although I have the feeling that there must be another way.
Saving user data in _users is interesting because only the user or an admin can read a user's document.
However, as you've found out, that doesn't mean that all user data is available to the userCtx object. All you get is the user's name and roles array. Can you make do with roles?
To retrieve all of the user's data, you should fetch the user's document from the _users database. You can do that with a GET request on http://localhost:5984/_users/org.couchdb.user:[USER].
To know what would be an appropriate solution to your problem, we'd need quite a bit more info. For instance, looking at your code, it seems you designed that filter with the intention of restricting replication to documents listed as being visible to the user. However, you can't really lock down CouchDB in a way that replication works, and the user doesn't have read access to the entire database. You really need one db per user for this to work.
I am currently working with the Algolia search API and I am unable to figure out how I would limit the results by key value searching + query string. By this i mean this.
I have a list of properties.
Each property belongs to a client.
Within the application If i am looking at a client information card and I want to search for a property that client owns It would make more sense to limit the results to the client and then look for the query string.
I am using MongoDB as my DB and storing the client id as a sub document like so
//Property Document
{
_id : "randomID"
client : {
_id : "randomID",
name : "ClientName"
}
}
If you want to restrict the search to a specific client, I would go for facet filtering to restrict the search to that client only.
Add client._id in the attributesForFaceting in your index settings
Filter your searches with the facetFilters=client._id:MYCLIENTID query parameter
Then, you should also take a look at the Secured API keys which are able to encode such restriction in a secure way (so the end-user cannot patch the JS code and work-around the filtering).
There is parameter called restrictSearchableAttributes[link] to restrict, at query time, search to some attributes only. Nevertheless, in your case I think you'd get more accurate results by putting each client info into a different record (+ the info of the related document).
As previously advised I have set up a database on iriscouch. Entered a couple of records.
I read in the CouchDB Guide book, I need to create a map function, in order to see my records
eg
function(doc) {
if(doc.date && doc.title) {
emit(doc.date, doc.title);
}
}
Now where do I put this function. Is it a MySQL like view and saved in the database and how do I get the result to my web page ?
Do I create the view within iriscouch somehow ?
Any guidance gratefully received as it is the usual first tentative steps problem of just not getting the idea and I have yet to find a 'Hello World' example which shows all steps.
Thanks
mcl
To me, it is similar as files on a computer filesystem. Most files just store data. But some files are also programs which can run and become an application. In CouchDB, all data is stored in documents however some documents activate special behavior in CouchDB. These are called design documents.
Design documents have an id of _design/example, i.e. it must start with _design/. You can create a document with the Futon tool, just like any other document. Add a key called views with a value of a JSON object:
{ "titles_by_date":
{ "map": "function(doc) { if(doc.date && doc.title) emit(doc.date, doc.title); }"
}
}
If you have other questions, there is also the Iris Couch forum any discussion about CouchDB and Iris Couch.
It seems you are unable to nest databases in CouchDB. How do people work around this limitation? For example, assume I want to create a blogging engine where each domain has a separate database. Within each database I might want a Users database, an Orders database, etc. to contain the various user documents, order documents, and so forth.
The obvious way seems to be a flat structure where the database name demarcates the artificial boundary between database nesting levels with a hyphen:
myblog.com-users
myblog.com-posts
myblog.com-comments
anotherblog.com-users
anotherblog.com-posts
anotherblog.com-comments
...hundreds more...
Another solution would be to keep the lower-level databases and mark each document with the top-level value:
users database containing a document User1, with field instance="Test" or a field domain="myblog.com"
I think you're misusing the term database here. There is no reason you can't store the users, posts, and comments data in a single couchdb database. Your couchdb views can separate out the user documents from the posts documents, from the comments documents.
example map function for user documents in a couchdb database:
function(doc) {
if (doc.type = 'user') { // only return user documents
emit([doc.domain, doc.id], doc); // the returned docs will be sorted by domain
}
}
see View Api for ways to restrict that views results by domain using startkey and endkey with view collation.
I think the best solution is to have one database per domain, each storing domain specific data.