Using the Rexter 2.7 Graph Server with Couchbase Server

One of my side projects at Couchbase is a Graph-API on top of it. This article explains how you can use the Rexter Graph Server with this implementation of the Blueprints 2.x API.

There is a forked version of Rexter available here: https://github.com/dmaier-couchbase/rexster .

However, the modifications are quite simple.

I disabled the enforcer plug-in in the main pom.xml file.

The 'rexter-server/pom.xml' file contains additional dependencies.

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.couchbase.graph</groupId>
  <artifactId>couchbase-blueprints</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.couchbase.client</groupId>
  <artifactId>java-client</artifactId>
  <version>2.1.3</version>
</dependency>

Also the file 'rexter-server/config/rexter.xml' was edited in order to use the Couchbase instance.

<graph>
    <graph-enabled>true</graph-enabled>
    <graph-name>cbsample</graph-name>
    <graph-type>com.couchbase.graph.rexter.CouchbaseGraphConfiguration</graph-type>
    <graph-location>/tmp/cb-graph</graph-location>
</graph>

To have this working it is expected that you have previously built CBGraph and that it sits in your local Maven cache. It can be found here: https://github.com/dmaier-couchbase/cb-graph

Your Couchbase connection is currently configured via the file 'couchbase.properties' which is part of the source code of CBGraph.

## Connection to Couchbase
#cb.con.hosts=192.168.56.104,192.168.56.105,192.168.56.106
cb.con.hosts=192.168.7.160
cb.con.port=8091
cb.con.bucket.name=graph
cb.con.bucket.pwd=test
cb.timeout.op=30000
cb.admin.user=couchbase
cb.admin.pwd=couchbase

## Views on side of Couchbase
cb.view.autocreate=true
cb.view.designdoc=graph_views
cb.view.alledges=all_edges
cb.view.allvertices=all_vertices
cb.view.alledgelabels=all_edge_labels
cb.view.allvertexprops=all_vertex_props
cb.view.alledgeprops=all_edge_props

So the steps are:

• Run 'mvn install' in the CBGraph project
• Run 'mvn install' in the Rexter project

Rexter's target folder now should contain a folder which is called 'rexster-server-2.7.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone'.

• Execute 'bin/rexter.sh -s'

You should see a message like

[INFO] Slf4JLogger - Connected to Node 192.168.7.160

[INFO] Slf4JLogger - Opened bucket graph

[INFO] Slf4JLogger - Connected to Node 192.168.7.155

[INFO] Slf4JLogger - Connected to Node 192.168.7.159

Now let's play a bit with the Rexter REST interface:

• All vertices: http://localhost:8182/graphs/cbsample/vertices
• All edges: http://localhost:8182/graphs/cbsample/edges
• A specific vertex called 'Bart': http://localhost:8182/graphs/cbsample/vertices/tae_bart
• Get all outgoing from Bart: http://localhost:8182/graphs/cbsample/vertices/tae_bart/outE
• ...

You can also browse the Graph via Rexter's UI:  http://localhost:8182/doghouse 

Here an example screen shot: