Division Lists

An example of marking up division lists using Sinatra and CouchDB.

Files

• report.xml - the original provided demo file
• example.html - an example of the same content in HTML 5
• default.css - CSS file to make example.html a bit cleaner

Setting Up

To get this to work, you're going to need CouchDB, couchdb-lucene and couchapp. If you already have those, feel free to skip past the instally stuff

Installing stuff

CouchDB

If you're on a Mac, CouchDBX is your best bet (or if you really must tinker, try this at your own risk); otherwise the nice folk over at CouchOne should have something for you

CouchApp

CouchApp is a great way to package up the inner workings of your CouchDB - views, fulltext indexes, that sort of thing - without pushing individual documents around by hand. Follow the installation instructions in the official README file

couchdb-lucene

The search engine bit. Reasonably painful to set up, but worth the effort.

1. Install Maven 2 if you don't already have it (good news fellow Mac-heads, nothing to do here). Everyone else you need to go over here
2. Grab the couchdb-lucene code from the github repository (hit the download source button over in the top right)
3. Unpack the couchdb-lucene code, open up a Terminal/iTerm/Command prompt window and navigate to the right directory
4. Type mvn
5. Make some tea, this could take a while
6. Navigate to the target subfolder and unpack the zip file you find in there
7. Rename the resulting folder couchdb-lucene and move it to where you want your couchdb-lucene app to live (I've put mine in /usr/local)
8. Locate your CouchDB local.ini file (if you're using CouchDBX you need to right-click on CouchDBX in your Applications folder and select "Show Package Contents", from there it's in Contents / Resources / couchdbx-core / couchdb_VERSION / etc / couchdb)
9. Hack in the following:

   
    [external]
    fti=/path/to/python /path/to/couchdb-lucene/tools/couchdb-external-hook.py
        
    [httpd_db_handlers]
    _fti = {couch_httpd_external, handle_external_req, <<"fti">>}
    

10. Under [couchdb] change os_process_timeout as follows:

    os_process_timeout=60000 ; increase the timeout from 5 seconds.

11. Save the ini file and restart CouchDB

Setting up the app

Setup the database

1. Start CouchDB (if it isn't already running)
2. Grab a Terminal window and navigate to the db folder
3. Run couchapp push http://localhost:5984/divisionlists
4. Run rake load_data

Start couchdb-lucene

1. In a new Terminal window, navigate to your couchdb-lucene folder
2. Run bin/run

A few examples

As well as using the app search (which is pretty basic at the moment) you can query the lucene index directly:

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=Roman

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=constituency:Essex

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=title:Lord

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=name:Christie

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=name:David

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=name:%22Winston%20Spencer%20Churchill%22

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=aye:%22winston%20spencer%20churchill%22

http://localhost:5984/divisionlists/_fti/_design/data/main?q=noe:%22winston%20spencer%20churchill%22