CouchView

A decorator library for generating CouchDB view (map/reduce) functions for CouchRest::Model models.

CouchView makes your views modular, decouples them from your model, and also makes it easier to unit test them.

This gem integrates with the couchrest_model gem (version ~> 1.0.0)

Install it as a gem:

$ gem install couch_view

Let's imagine that we want to create a map on our model that includes all of the document labels (human-readable ids):

We can start by simply calling the "map" method on our model, passing in the :label property:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView
  
  property :label

  map :label
end

This will generate a javascript map function that looks like this:

function(doc){
  if (doc['couchrest-type'] == 'Article')
    emit(doc.label, null)
}

We can query this map by using the "map_by_label!" method:

Article.map_by_label! #==> all of the articles, in order of label

You can use any of the standard CouchDB query options on this view; see the section "Query Proxy" for more information.

We can also count all of the articles in the "by_label" map using the count_by_label! method:

Article.count_by_label! #==> 0, assuming we haven't created any articles

Next, let's imagine that we'd like to create a view with a compound key: let's index all of the articles in the system by author and created_at:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView
  property :author
  timestamps!

  map :author, :created_at
end

And it's as simple as that. CouchView generated the following javascript map function:

function(doc){
  if (doc['couchrest-type'] == 'Article')
    emit([doc.author, doc.created_at], null)
}

We can now iterate over the map using the map_by_author_and_created_at! method, and we can count it using the count_by_author_and_created_at! method.

But what if you need to create a more complex view? CouchView is your friend here. Let's imagine that we want to index all of the articles by the number of comments they've received.

We'll start by creating a map class:

class ByCommentCount
  include CouchView::Map

  def map
    <<-JS
      function(doc){
        if (#{conditions})
          emit(doc.comments.length, null)
      }
    JS
  end
end

Notice that we call the "conditions" method inside of our map. This method is mixed into our class by the CouchView::Map module. You'll learn how this method allows us to decorate our views with conditions in the next section. For now, let's see what happens if we simply instantiate this class and call the "map" method on it:

ByCommentCount.new.map #==> 
  "
    function(doc){
      emit(doc.comments.length, null)
    }
  "

Well that's not very interesting... However, what if we use this map in a model?

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView
  property :comments, [String]
  map ByCommentCount
end

Now, CouchView will generate a map function on our Article design document that will look like this:

function(doc){
  if (doc['couchrest-type'] == 'Article')
    emit(doc.comments.length, null)
}

Similar to before, we can query this index with map_by_comment_count! and count_by_comment_count!.

Next, let's imagine that sometimes we'd like to constrain our Article views to published articles, "web exclusive" articles, and a mixture of the two. Imagine our model was defined like this:

To start, let's define the following condition modules:

module WebExclusive
  def conditions
    "#{super} && doc.web_exclusive == true"
  end
end

module Published
  def conditions
    "#{super} && doc.published == true"
  end
end

We can then add them into our map definitions thusly:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView

  property :label
  property :web_exclusive,  TrueClass, :default => false
  property :published,      TrueClass, :default => false

  map :label do
    conditions WebExclusive, Published
  end
end

Now, we can constrain our map_by_label query proxy to consider only web exlusive articles, published articles, or both:

Article.map_by_label.published.get!               
  #==> published articles ordered by label

Article.map_by_label.web_exclusive.get!           
  #==> web exclusive articles ordered by label

Article.map_by_label.published.web_exclusive.get! 
  #==> published, web exclusive articles ordered by label

By default, the conditions were named after the module (i.e., "web_exclusive" for WebExclusive, "published" for Published).

In a real app, it's likely that you'll end up namespacing your condition modules, in which case, the autogenerated names for your modules won't work.

Let's go back to our article example, and imagine that we namespaced our conditions under "Article::Conditions":

class Article
  module Conditions
    module WebExclusive
      def conditions
        "#{super} && doc.web_exclusive == true"
      end
    end

    module Published
      def conditions
        "#{super} && doc.published == true"
      end
    end
  end
end

If we added these conditions to a map, the condition names would not be qualified.

If you'd prefer that they be qualified, you'll need to tell couch_view what to name them:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView

  property :label
  property :web_exclusive,  TrueClass, :default => false
  property :published,      TrueClass, :default => false

  map :label do
    conditions do
      filter_by_web_exclusive Conditions::WebExclusive
      filter_by_published     Conditions::Published
    end
  end
end

Now you can use these conditions on your proxy:

Article.map_by_label.filter_by_web_exclusive.filter_by_published.each {...}

CouchView includes a simple query proxy system for building your map/reduce queries.

Given the following model:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView
  map :label
end

When you call map_by_label, you'll recieve a proxy for the query you want to run:

proxy = Article.map_by_label

You can now begin modifying your proxy with the standard CouchDB query options. For example, suppose we'd like to limit our result to 10. We can call either the limit method, or the limit! method. The former will return a new proxy, and leave the original untouched. The latter will modify the proxy it was called on.

# generate a new proxy
new_proxy = proxy.limit 10

# or update the existing property
proxy.limit!(10)

Here's the full list of CouchDB query parameters that CouchView supports:

limit       
skip           
key
startkey       
endkey         
startkey_docid 
endkey_docid   
stale          
descending     
group          
group_level    
reduce         
include_docs   
update_seq     

You can read about what each of these keys do here: http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_view_API

Your query will execute when you call each or get! on it:

Article.map_by_label.startkey!("a").endkey!("b").each do |articles|
  # do something with the articles
end

# or...

articles = Article.map_by_label.startkey!("a").endkey!("b").get!

You can also make your map_by_label and count_by_label return immediately by adding an ! onto the end:

Article.map_by_label!
  #==> [Article<#848283>,...]

Article.count_by_label!
  #==> 5

You can add any arbitrary reduce onto your view by using the reduce class method. Just make sure to group it with a map by placing them both within a couch_view block:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView

  property :label
  
  couch_view do
    map :label
    reduce <<-JS
      function(key, values){
        return sum(values)
      }
    JS
  end
end

And now you can call it with:

Article.reduce_by_label.get!

Note that you can still call map_by_label as well. You can't, however, call count_by_label.

As you've seen, CouchView will generate names for your views based on the properties being mapped (or based on the name of the CouchView::Map class passed to map).

You can override this default name by passing a name to the couch_view method:

class Article < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchView

  couch_view :over_label do
    map :label
  end
end

You can now call your view using the map_over_label and count_over_label methods:

Article.map_over_label!
Article.count_over_label!