Getting_started_with_Ruby

Getting started with Ruby and the CouchDB API.

The following shows the basics of working with the raw CouchDB REST api from Ruby. If you want a richer interface that more tightly maps Couch documents into Ruby and also lets you save ruby objects directly to the database, you should check out the RubyLibrary.

Example Wrapper Class

require 'net/http'

module Couch

  class Server
    def initialize(host, port, options = nil)
      @host = host;
      @port = port;
      @options = options;
    end

    def delete(uri)
      request(Net::HTTP::Delete.new(uri))
    end

    def get(uri)
      request(Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri))
    end

    def put(uri, json)
      req = Net::HTTP::Put.new(uri)
      req["content-type"] = "application/json"
      req.body = json
      request(req)
    end

    def post(uri, json)
      req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri)
      req["content-type"] = "application/json"
      req.body = json
      request(req)
    end

    def request(req)
      res = Net::HTTP.start(@host, @port) {|http|
        http.request(req)
      }
      if (not res.kind_of?(Net::HTTPSuccess))
        handle_error(req, res)
      end
      res
    end

    private

    def handle_error(req, res)
      e = RuntimeError.new("#{res.code}:#{res.message}\nMETHOD:#{req.method}\nURI:#{req.path}\n#{res.body}")
      raise e
    end
  end
end

Creating a Database

To create a database called foo:

server = Couch::Server.new("localhost", "5984")
server.put("/foo/", "")

Deleting a Database

To delete a database called foo:

server = Couch::Server.new("localhost", "5984")
server.delete("/foo")

Creating a Document

To create a document in the database foo with the id document_id:

server = Couch::Server.new("localhost", "5984")
doc = <<-JSON
{"type":"comment","body":"First Post!"}
JSON
server.put("/foo/document_id", doc)

Reading a Document

To read a document from database foo with the id document_id:

server = Couch::Server.new("localhost", "5984")
res = server.get("/foo/document_id")
json = res.body
puts json