Using REST to delete a document in CouchDB

You denote a RESTful deletion of a document by sending a HTTP DELETE request with the ID and revision of the document to be deleted.

How to do it…

Using the HTML from the previous recipe, here's a script that extracts the ID and revision from the form fields, does some simple error checking, and sends a deletion request to the server for the document with the indicated ID and revision:

function doRemove()
{	
  id = $('#id').val();
  rev = $('#rev').val();
  if (id == '') 
  {
    alert("Must provide an ID to delete!");
    return;
  }
  if (rev == '')
  {
    alert("Must provide a document revision!");
    return;
  }


  $.ajax({
    type: "DELETE",
    url: "http://localhost:5984/documents/" + id + '?rev=' + rev,
  })
  .done(function(result) {
    $('#json').html(JSON.stringify(result));
    var resultHtml = "Deleted";
    $('#result').html(resultHtml);
  })
}

How it works…

The code begins by extracting the ID and revision from the form elements and...