What is libcouchbase

libcouchbase is a callback oriented client which makes it very easy to write high performance, thread safe programs. If you're interested in the early history of libcouchbase you might want to check out the blog post

http://trondn.blogspot.com/2011/10/libcouchbase-explore-full-features-of.html

The key component of libcouchbase is that its asynchronous, giving you full freedom in adding it to your application logic. From using the asynchronous interface you may schedule a lot of operations to be performed, and then you'll get the callbacks whenever they are performed. I do know that there are a lot of people who don't care about an async interface, so you may also enable synchronous mode. When synchronous mode is enabled you can't use this batching.

Examples

You might want to read the blog post I wrote where I create a small example program and explains why we need to do certain stuff at:

http://trondn.blogspot.com/2012/01/so-how-do-i-use-this-libcouchbase.html

Unfortunately for you we've later completely refactored the API, so when you've read and understood the idea behind the library in the above blog post you should read the following post explaining the rationale behind changing the API, and what you as a user have to do..

http://trondn.blogspot.no/2012/08/libcouchbase-overhauling.html

How to use libuv as the IO backend

libuv is a cross platform library abstracting event notifications. Unfortunately the current stable version of libuv (0.10.x) don't provide a "make install" target making it harder for end users use. The easiest way for you to use libuv as a backend is to use the unstable version (currently 0.11.x) and run make install to install all required headers and libraries. If you for some reason don't want to do that you can then manually do the "install" target and copy the include files and libraries to the appropriate directories ( /usr/include and /usr/lib ), or you may run instruct the compiler and linker where to find the libraries at config time like:

./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/tmp/libuv/include" LDFLAGS="-L/tmp/libuv"

And make sure runtime linker can find the library (either with DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH/LD_LIBRARY_PATH or -rpath) in case of non-standard location.

Please note that if you try to link to a static library of libuv you have to find out all of the other libraries libuv require.

Bugs

Please see: http://www.couchbase.com/issues/browse/CCBC

Run the testsuite towards a running cluster

LCB_TEST_CLUSTER_CONF=<hostname>,<bucket>,<user>,<password> ./tests/unit-tests

Example:

LCB_TEST_CLUSTER_CONF=localhost,default,Administrator,mypass ./tests/unit-tests

Hacking

Please note that the version from git requires autotools to be installed. You should consult with your package manager to ensure that the following packages are installed and updated: autoconf (2.60+), automake, and libtool. Follow the steps below to checkout the most recent version from git and build from source on your hardware.

1. Grab the sources using git:

    git clone git://github.com/couchbase/libcouchbase.git
   

2. Generate ./configure script using autoconf. Note: this step requires that you have cloned this repository from git and that the .git directory exists. If you have used the tarball from github, it will complain on this step, see config/autorun.sh file for details.

    ./config/autorun.sh
   

3. Generate Makefile. Take a look at possible options to the script: ./configure --help.

    ./configure
   

4. Make and check the build (you can also use make check to only run test suite):

    make && make distcheck
   

   Note that by default 'make check' will test all the plugins supported by libcouchbase. This is needed because plugins have different implementations regarding I/O.

Contact us

The developers of libcouchbase usually hang out in the #libcouchbase IRC channel on freenode.net.

Happy hacking!

Cheers,

Trond Norbye