The single aim of this project is to simplify sharing, viewing and editing Couchbase.Lite databases from any mobile device or desktop.
Couchbase.Lite is not available on all platforms such as MacOS. This means that we can't open a Couchbase.Lite DB directly from a simulator. We can use the Hub as a proxy, though, and open the database on a platform that can open Couchbase.Lite databases.
- Read Couchbase.Lite DBs
- Provide Hub for receiving databases from remote systems
- Add/Remove Edit Database Scanners from client
- Allow update of database records
- Save documents / allow updating among all cached DBs
- Cache managment (Delete,Rename,Duplicate)
- Allow creation of new database
- Add Hub functionality to add/overrwrite database remotely
- Export All JSON
- Compare Docs in Database
- Create custom document viewers
- Windows
- Android
- iOS
- Linux
- Mac (When .NET MAUI is a little more solid)
- Windows
- Linux
- Mac
- Android
- iOS
Important: This viewer is for CBLite 3.x. You can view earlier DBs with it but if you update your DB using this tool, it will become a CBLite 3.x DB. You should be able to fork and create a DB with a lesser CB dependency or checkout a commit earlier than commit with message: 'Updating couchbase lite to 3.0.8'.
The hub is the central point that apps can send their DBs to for other clients to share. They can also be used to scan the local machine for databases. The hub is a super simple http server that serves the couchbase files.
Platforms such as Linux and Mac are not able to open Couchbase.Lite databases at the time of this writing. You can use the Hub to relay the files from a platform that does not support Couchbase.Lite to one that does.
To find the Couchbase.Lite DB files, the Hub contains Scanners that search for the databases in different ways. These are now setup client-side which will be covered in the client documentation.
The client does the parsing and displaying of the documents within Couchbase.Lite databases. Windows desktop (UWP), Android and iOS are currently being supported. You can also connect to Hubs to relay files around between platforms and open Couchbase.Lite DBs located on platforms that aren't supported.
Setting up Hubs is also now all done using the client after connecting.
The Hub is setup using the client. All that needs to be done is to open the DbViewer.Hub.sln solution and start the Hub.
Note: If using a Mac with an M1/M2 processor, make sure that you are using the x86 .Net 6 SDK due to lack of ARM support in Couchbase. Some IDEs (such as Rider) will require you to select this manually.
When starting the app, you will be met with a blank screen since we have not yet added any Couchbase.Lite database. We will first need to connect to a Hub, set it up if we haven't yet, and then we can start downloading and viewing databases.
This step assumes that you have a Hub running. You will need to note the IP address of the computer running the Hub, or, if it is the same machine, you can just leave as 127.0.0.1.
You will only need to do this once after install.
The Hub comes with a sample DB that we are going to download here. No additional setup is required to try this. Simply go to the Hub and click Rescan All, select the travel-sample and then Download.
DbViewer has idea of a locator that allows for different database scenarios such as pointing to static directories or automatically finding iOS simulator folders using XCode.
The iOS DB Provider uses XCode to find the location of a particular simulator OR allows you to always scan the active booted simulator. You will just need to supply the bundle-id, simulatorid (or booted) and the relative path to the root app.
note: Ensure simctl is installed and set for command line use
This simply points to a path that won't change. You only need to provide the path to the location of the Couchbase.Lite root directory.
Due to the high number of 3.x releases coming out and the incompatibility between them, we needed a quick way to switch all Couchbase.Lite packages. The VersionSelector project will prompt you for the version of Couchbase Lite you'd like to use and will then find and update all projects.
