.. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not
.. use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
.. the License at
..
..   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
..
.. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
.. distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
.. WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
.. License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
.. the License.

.. _api/design-docs:

================
Design Documents
================

In CouchDB, design documents provide the main interface for building a CouchDB
application. The design document defines the views used to extract information
from CouchDB through one or more views. Design documents are created within
your CouchDB instance in the same way as you create database documents, but the
content and definition of the documents is different. Design Documents are
named using an ID defined with the design document URL path, and this URL can
then be used to access the database contents.

Views and lists operate together to provide automated (and formatted) output
from your database.

.. toctree::
    common
    views
    search
    render
    rewrites