To broaden this topic slightly, I'm thinking that some form of data migration automation would also be important to have, in addition to updating design documents. For example, if a document structure is modified, we would want to have an automated way of updating existing data to the new structure.
Do we have anything currently existing to manage data migration and document structure evolution? If not, I'm thinking it would be worth including the topic in discussions on managing design documents. Simon ________________________________________ From: fluid-work <fluid-work-boun...@lists.idrc.ocad.ca> on behalf of Harnum, Alan <ahar...@ocadu.ca> Sent: August 28, 2017 11:19:59 AM To: Tony Atkins Cc: Fluid Work Subject: Re: CouchDB - managing design documents? Hi Tony, Thanks for the replies – we’ve also been looking at the various Couchapp implementations, but have been hesitant both for what you cite below (large additional stack of dependencies) and this part of the current CouchDB docs: http://docs.couchdb.org/en/2.1.0/ddocs/, which discourages the previously-promoted “CouchApps” paradigm that the various CouchApp tools are designed to use. My sense is that the various Couchapp projects are not under terribly active development in light of this change in CouchDB’s latest documentation. I’d also be an advocate of a Fluid component for capturing views and perhaps other configuration aspects of an Infusion application that intends to make use of CouchDB - I actually did some experimentation in this direction last Friday, which I’ve now cleaned up a bit and added some documentation: https://github.com/waharnum/couch-config In my ideal world I think I’d be able to write a CouchDB configuration for an application in pure Infusion rather than pushing JSON around with curl or other tools. From: Tony Atkins <t...@raisingthefloor.org> Date: Monday, August 28, 2017 at 7:32 AM To: "Harnum, Alan" <ahar...@ocadu.ca> Cc: Fluid Work <fluid-w...@fluidproject.org> Subject: Re: CouchDB - managing design documents? Hi, Alan: Thanks again for starting yet another interesting and important discussion. I've had to do a lot of this in my own work, and have alternated between: 1. Storing the design documents as raw JSON (mainly for testing). This is similar to the approach used in the example you shared. 2. Writing design documents using couchapp<https://github.com/couchapp/couchapp>. The first approach seems easy enough, but is a bit tedious on a few fronts: 1. It's difficult to write even moderately complex functions as escaped strings. 2. Replacing an existing design document is a bit tedious, as it involves either looking up the current document's _rev or DELETEing and then POSTing the replacement. 3. Although it's possible to require libraries from a design document<http://docs.couchdb.org/en/2.0.0/query-server/javascript.html#require>, this is pretty hard to manage using raw JSON files. Couchapp makes each of these easier: 1. You just save your functions to a file, which you can run through our standard linting and more easily check for syntax errors. You can even write unit tests against the functions you plan to use in your design documents. This is especially helpful when developing reduce functions, which can be a bear to troubleshoot with CouchDB or PouchDB. 2. Although it's trivial, couchapp makes it very easy to update design docs repeatedly. 3. Couchapp makes it easier to bundle dependencies as part of your design document (basically by deploying them to a "lib" or similar directory within a design document's directory). That being said, couchapp is something I have only relied on reluctantly. I don't use it in tests, for example, as it seems a bit much to me to introduce a whole stack of dependencies (python, required libraries) just to solve what's a fairly simple use case. Antranig and I have previously talked about building a Fluid component to assist with creating design documents, and it seems like a good time to broaden and refresh that discussion. Regardless of whomever else is interested, I would be very happy to work together with you (and I'm assuming Antranig) on a ticket outlining the use cases in more detail. Depending on the scope of what we agree is needed, I might end up simply building it the next time I need to work on a batch of design documents. I'd also be very happy to help review something someone else builds and test that in my own work. Cheers, Tony On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 4:16 PM, Harnum, Alan <ahar...@ocadu.ca<mailto:ahar...@ocadu.ca>> wrote: Hi all, We (Greg Moss & myself) are curious to know the opinions of others who've worked with it (especially in the context of Infusion / Kettle) about how to best manage design documents when using CouchDB as part of an application. Specifically, what approaches have worked for externalizing design document code, ensuring the database has the latest design document code, etc? I know one example of doing this is in gpii-oauth2-datastore, which is a JSON externalization of the views that is imported to the DB as part of application provisioning, described at: https://github.com/GPII/universal/tree/master/gpii/node_modules/gpii-oauth2/gpii-oauth2-datastore/dbViews I am wondering if people have seen or considered other approaches. My own feeling is that it would be useful to be able to model an expected CouchDB database design document as an Infusion component, with the component taking responsibility for ensuring a set of view functions are present in the specified DB, but I don't feel a great certainty about this. Curious as to the thoughts of others! Alan ALAN HARNUM SENIOR INCLUSIVE DEVELOPER INCLUSIVE DESIGN RESEARCH CENTRE, OCAD UNIVERSITY E ahar...@ocadu.ca<mailto://ahar...@ocadu.ca> OCAD UNIVERSITY 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, Canada, M5T 1W1 www.ocadu.ca<http://ocadu.ca/> _______________________________________________________ fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work@lists.idrc.ocad.ca<mailto:fluid-work@lists.idrc.ocad.ca> To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://lists.idrc.ocad.ca/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work _______________________________________________________ fluid-work mailing list - fluid-work@lists.idrc.ocad.ca To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://lists.idrc.ocad.ca/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
