A tool for registering CouchDB design documents, couch-register-design

Whenever I experiment CouchDB, especially design documents, always I feel unhandy to upload the document.

For simple experiments, Futon (CouchDB web interface) is the easiest solution. However, if you want to keep the changes systemically, or if you want to use any version control system, you're on your own.

The difficulty come from the format of the design document; CouchDB wants you to specify javascript functions in JSON string. If you decided not to use Futon, you'll escape your function in JSON string by yourself.

Worse, if your function is not valid, you'll realize after the design document is uploaded.

Precisely, I want a tool that:

• can add/update the design document from the sources that I provided,
• can verify all javascript functions before uploading,
• can upload attachment files.

First, I tried to use CouchApp, but lack of the detailed guide makes me gave up. Sorry CouchApp folks. :(

Second, I wrote simple bash shell scripts to interact with CouchDB with curl(1), to upload the document after escaping the function to build JSON document. It was not simple to implement all the features that I need, so I stopped.

Third, I try to write the tool in Ruby, and try to use httpclient, but I couldn't make httpclient works for HTTP client features like multipart/form-data. (Mayhaps I didn't know how to use httpclient fluently.) So I stopped again.

Fourth, I realized that I spent too much time to write this script. I don't want to dig the source of the httpclient, so I just write small Ruby wrapper of curl(1), and made the tool, finally.

If you have interest, visit couch-register-design and experiment.

$ ./register-designs.rb -h
Usage: register-designs.rb [OPTION...] DIRECTORY

    -d, --database [URL]             CouchDB endpoint URL
				     (default: "http://localhost:5984/sedis")

    -j, --jspath [JS-PATH]           Javascript interpreter
    -v, --verbose                    Verbose output

    -h, --help                       Show this message
    -V, --version                    Show version and exit

Register design documents from DIRECTORY where it contains
files for the document.

  DIRECTORY/views/VIEW-NAME/*.js  (e.g. map.js or reduce.js)
  DIRECTORY/shows/*.js            (e.g. print.js or others)
  DIRECTORY/*.js                  (e.g. validate_doc_update.js)
  DIRCETORY/_attachments/*        (automatically uploaded)

Report bugs to <cinsky at gmail.com> or post bugs to
  <https://github.com/cinsk/couch-register-design/issues>