Apache CouchDB is a very nice schema-free document-oriented database that I’m playing with lately.
Here’s a quick guide to get CouchDB running on Ubuntu 8:
Prepare your environment
sudo aptitude install automake autoconf libtool subversion-tools help2man spidermonkey-bin build-essential erlang erlang-manpages libicu38 libicu-dev libreadline5-dev checkinstall libmozjs-dev wget
Create a couchdb user
sudo adduser --no-create-home --disabled-password --disabled-login couchdb
Download and build the latests version
wget http://mirrors.uol.com.br/pub/apache/incubator/couchdb/0.8.1-incubating/apache-couchdb-0.8.1-incubating.tar.gz
tar -xzvf apache-couchdb-0.8.1-incubating.tar.gz
./configure --bindir=/usr/bin --sbindir=/usr/sbin --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/etc
make
Install it
sudo make install
sudo chown couchdb:couchdb -R /var/lib/couchdb /var/log/couchdb
sudo update-rc.d couchdb defaults
Start the service
sudo /etc/init.d/couchdb start
CouchDB will be running on port 5984. By default it listens only for connections from the local host. To change that edit /etc/couchdb/couch.ini and restart CouchDB.
Sample code (Ruby):
#!/usr/bin/env ruby # Setup require "rubygems" require "couchrest" require "test/unit/assertions" include Test::Unit::Assertions # Database couchdb = CouchRest.new("http://localhost:5984") couchdb.database('helloworlds').delete! rescue nil db = couchdb.create_db('helloworlds') # Create db.bulk_save([ {"_id" => "en", "helloworld" => "Hello world"}, {"_id" => "pt", "helloworld" => "Ola mundo"} ]) # Retrive document = db.get("pt") assert_equal "Ola mundo", document["helloworld"] # Update document["helloworld"] = "Olá mundo!!!" db.save(document) # Retrive again assert_equal "Olá mundo!!!", db.get("pt")["helloworld"] # Fails to delete, since variable msg is an only snapshot of the data assert_raise(RestClient::RequestFailed) { db.delete(document) } # But working with a last revision of the document document_last_revision = db.get("pt") assert_not_equal document["_rev"], document_last_revision["_rev"] assert_nothing_raised { db.delete(document_last_revision) } # Schema free db.bulk_save([ {"name" => "Maria Hernandes", "helloworld" => "Oi!"}, {"name" => "John Wisky", "helloworld" => "Whatzup!", "age" => 24}, {"helloworld" => "Duuuude!", "age" => 18, "country" => "Australia"}, {"name" => "Peleteiro", "age" => 29, "country" => "Brazil", "helloworld" => "Olá"}, {"helloworld" => "Hi guys", "name" => "Michel", "country" => "USA"} ])
