Backbone Couch

Overrides for Backbone to use CouchDB for Model persistence. Intended for server-side use of Backbone like in Bones.

Installation

npm install backbone-couch

Usage

var Backbone = require('backbone');

// Create a new backbone-couch handler for a database 'documents'.
var couch = require('backbone-couch')({
    host: '127.0.0.1',
    port: '5984',
    name: 'documents'
});

// Create database, push default design documents to it and
// assign sync method to Backbone.
couch.install(function(err) {
    Backbone.sync = couch.sync;
});

// Backbone.sync will now load and save models from a 'documents' couch db.

Conventions

backbone-couch stores models in using the model.url as its _id. By default, Collections retrieve models by matching the Collection url against the initial portion of the Model url. See backbone.json for the default design document and collection view.

var orange = new FruitModel({id: 'orange'});
var apple = new FruitModel({id: 'apple'});
var banana = new FruitModel({id: 'banana'});

console.log(orange.url()); // fruits/orange
console.log(apple.url());  // fruits/apple
console.log(banana.url()); // fruits/banana

var fruits = new FruitCollection();

console.log(fruits.url);   // fruits

fruits.fetch();            // retrieves orange, apple, banana

To override the default design doc with your own special sauce use the doc option when calling couch.install().

// Pass a filepath to your design doc.
couch.install({doc: '/path/to/my/doc.json'}, callback);

// Or provide a literal js object directly.
couch.install({doc: {
    _id: '_design/backbone',
    language: 'javascript'
}, callback);

Your design doc should use _design/backbone as its _id. Collections will be called against this design doc using their url. For example, if you have a Collection /blog/recent, your design doc should provide a rewrite rule to respond to this path:

{
    "_id":"_design/backbone",
    "language":"javascript",
    "views": {
        "recent": {
            "map": "function(doc) { emit(doc._id, doc._id) }"
        }
    },
    "rewrites": [
        {
            "from": "/blog/recent",
            "to": "_view/recent",
            "query": {
                "limit": "10"
                "include_docs": "true"
            }
        }
    ]
}

See the rewrite handler docs or this blog post for more info on design doc rewrites.

Run tests

You must configure CouchDB to work with HTTPS in order to run tests. See this wiki page

cd backbone-couch/
npm test