How to check if a couchdb document exists (without retrieving it)?

Question

How can I just check if a document exists, mabye get the revision, but not make couchdb send the body of the document?

I remember I saw this explained somewhere but I cannot find it.

Edit: Iirc in the example you received only a http header with no data. The header indicated if present or not.

Edit2: Evan suggests to make a HEAD request (instead of GET). This answers my question.

CouchDB sends an ETag Header for document requests. The ETag Header is simply the document's revision in quotes.

Quoted from: http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/HTTP_Document_API#ETags.2BAC8-Caching

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered May 14 '10 at 03:57

22

Instead of performing a HTTP GET request, do a HTTP HEAD request. This will only return the headers and no content. The returned status will tell you if the object exists.

answered May 14 '10 at 03:57

Evan

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Thank you, I will try that soon :) - karlthorwald - aka – user89021 May 14 '10 at 10:46
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Is there a way to do this with the cradle API? – streetlight Apr 29 '13 at 21:10
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Yes you can do this with cradle like so: db.head(id, function(err, opt1, opt2){ if(opt2!='404') item exists do something }) – haknick Mar 30 '14 at 14:12

How to check if a couchdb document exists (without retrieving it)?

1 Answers1