Couch Potato Bookmarklet – Lazy Features for CouchDB’s Futon

The Problem

We’ve been using CouchDB in our current project at work and I’ve been using the CouchDB Futon manager more and more lately to create, edit, or delete documents.

After a lot of test data gets into our document store, I end up needing to clear out the documents. I could Delete the whole database with a button, but I’d rather not remove the CouchDB design documents defining custom views.

In order to delete documents from Futon, you have to manually drill down into each document and then click the delete button. I found this very monotonous, so I decided to make a bookmarklet to help me out some.

The Solution

So, I created the CouchDB Potato Bookmarklet (because I’m lazy). The bookmarklet creates a new delete column and provides a “Delete Documents” link to delete all the checked documents. I also added a “Select All Documents” which only selects non-design documents (so that I don’t accidentally delete a CouchDB view). These links can be found in the right navigation column under the “Recent Databases” section.

The Bookmarklet

To use the bookmarklet, drag the following link to your bookmark/favorites list:

» Couch Potato «

Then, when you're on a listing page in Futon, just click the bookmarklet.

Ideas for Future Development

I’ve considered adding some more functionality to Couch Potato such as

• Converting it into a GreaseMonkey script (Google Chrome & Firefox)
• Add tooltips to the document rows showing the details of the stored document

Do you have any ideas you’d like to see?