Does the Couchbase REST API support NON-JSON data (binary data) - c

Question

I am storing c structures to couchbase, I am doing so so that I can read back these structures later and process directly, I am avoiding the steps of
1 )C structure - > JSON while storing
and
2 )JSON -> C structure while retrieving.
This is working well when I use lcb_get() and lcb_set()
But I also need have a requirement for making hits to views using the REST model and lcb_make_http_request () call.
So I was wondering how the lcb_make_http_request () will handle my non-JSON C structure , which is hex data and may have nulls in between.
Will I still be able to extract and populate my C - structure with the data that I get as HTTP response after calling lcb_make_http_request () ?

Answer 1

As WiredPrairie said in his comment you aren't forced to use JSON and can store C structs, but keep in mind byte order and field alignment when you are doing so.
When server detects that your data isn't in JSON format it will encode it using base64 and set meta.type to "json" when the document comes to map function.
And you will be able to emit your complete document as a value if you'd like to get the value in the HTTP stream. In case of this simple map function:
function (doc, meta) {
if (meta.type == "base64") {
emit(meta.id);
}
}
You will get response like this one (I've formatted it for clarity):
{
"total_rows": 1,
"rows": [
{
"id": "foo",
"key": "foo",
"value": "4KwuAgAAAAA="
}
]
}
It does mean that you must use some json parser to extract "value" attribute from result, decode it and you will get exactly the same bytestream, you have sent it with SET command.