2. Getting Started

In this tutorial you will learn how to create your first CouchApp (embedded applications in CouchDB) using the couchapp script.

Generate your application

couchapp provides you the generate command to initialize your first CouchApp. It will create an application skeleton by generating needed folders and files to start. Run:

$ couchapp generate helloworld

$ couchapp generate

Create a show function

To display our hello we will create a show function.

$ cd helloworld/
$ couchapp generate show hello

Here the generate command create a file named hello.js in the folder shows. The content of this file is:

function(doc, req) {

}

which is default template for show functions.

For now we only want to display the string “Hello World”. Edit your show function like this:

function(doc, req) {
    return "Hello World";
}

Push your CouchApp

Now that we have created our basic application, it’s time to push it to our CouchDB server. Our CouchDB server is at the url http://127.0.0.1:5984 and we want to push our app in the database testdb:

$ couchapp push testsb

$ couchapp push

Go on http://127.0.0.1:5984/testdb/_design/helloworld/index.html, you will see:

CouchApp hello world

Clone your CouchApp

So your friend just pushed the helloworld app from his computer. But you want to edit the CouchApp on your own computer. That’s easy, just clone his application:

$ couchapp clone http://127.0.0.1:5984/testdb/_design/helloworld helloworld

This command fetch the CouchApp helloworld from the remote database of your friend.

$ couchapp clone

Now you can edit the couchapp on your own computer.