1. Getting started with couchdb-python

Some snippets of code to get you started with writing code against CouchDB.

Starting off:

>>> import couchdb
>>> couch = couchdb.Server()

This gets you a Server object, representing a CouchDB server. By default, it assumes CouchDB is running on localhost:5984. If your CouchDB server is running elsewhere, set it up like this:

>>> couch = couchdb.Server('http://example.com:5984/')

You can also pass authentication credentials and/or use SSL:

>>> couch = couchdb.Server('https://username:password@host:port/')

You can create a new database from Python, or use an existing database:

>>> db = couch.create('test') # newly created
>>> db = couch['mydb'] # existing

After selecting a database, create a document and insert it into the db:

>>> doc = {'foo': 'bar'}
>>> db.save(doc)
('e0658cab843b59e63c8779a9a5000b01', '1-4c6114c65e295552ab1019e2b046b10e')
>>> doc
{'_rev': '1-4c6114c65e295552ab1019e2b046b10e', 'foo': 'bar', '_id': 'e0658cab843b59e63c8779a9a5000b01'}

The save() method returns the ID and “rev” for the newly created document. You can also set your own ID by including an _id item in the document.

Getting the document out again is easy:

>>> db['e0658cab843b59e63c8779a9a5000b01']
<Document 'e0658cab843b59e63c8779a9a5000b01'@'1-4c6114c65e295552ab1019e2b046b10e' {'foo': 'bar'}>

To find all your documents, simply iterate over the database:

>>> for id in db:
...     print id
...
'e0658cab843b59e63c8779a9a5000b01'

Now we can clean up the test document and database we created:

>>> db.delete(doc)
>>> couch.delete('test')