Simple Example

$ curl -s http://localhost:5984/test | json "return v;"
{
 "db_name": "test",
 "doc_count": 0,
 "doc_del_count": 0,
 "update_seq": 0,
 "purge_seq": 0,
 "compact_running": false,
 "disk_size": 79,
 "instance_start_time": "1274021449672284",
 "disk_format_version": 5
}

Use curl to fetch the status of CouchDB database “test” from the local CouchDB node and then just pretty print it by returning the implicit value v.

$ curl -s http://localhost:5984/test | json "return v.disk_size;"
79

Just print the disk_size of CouchDB database “test”. You can use all the modern JavaScript functions v8 offers plus the implicit “sys” object that lets you log stuff to stderr or inspect objects. A little script that I find highly useful:

#!/bin/bash
# Delete all jcouchdb test databases
DBS=$(curl -s http://localhost:5984/_all_dbs | \
json 'return v.filter( function(db) { return db.indexOf("jcouchdb") == 0; }).join("\n");')

for i in $DBS
do
 curl -X DELETE http://localhost:5984/$i
done

Filter the list of database to only contain those that start with “jcouchdb”, then loop over them to delete.

Links:

• “json” command line script. Requires NodeJS to be installed in /usr/local. If it’s installed somewhere else, you need to change the script

Update: Added “return v;” as default function. now also supports “-h” and “–help”.