Delete all documents whose id appears in a given view result.

delete_documents_from_view_result.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'rest_client'
require 'json'
require 'cgi'


def bye
  abort("Usage: #{$0} [view_url]\nExample: #{$0} http://admin:secret@127.0.0.1:5984/db/_design/ddoc/_view/recent-posts")
end

def delete_documents_from_view_result(url)
  case url
  when /^(https?:\/\/.+?\/.+?)\/_design\/.+?\/_view\/.+/
    db_url = $1
  end

  unless db_url
    bye
  end

  json = JSON.parse(RestClient.get(url))

  json["rows"].each do |row|
    doc_url = db_url + '/' + CGI.escape(row["id"])
    begin
      rev = RestClient.head(doc_url).headers[:etag].gsub('"', '')
      RestClient.delete(doc_url + '?rev=' + rev)
    rescue Exception
      puts "warning: could not delete '#{doc_url}'"
      next
    end
  end
end

unless ARGV[0]
  bye
end
delete_documents_from_view_result(ARGV[0])