This is the second in a series of blog posts introducing the Apache CouchDB 2.0 release. Read part one: The Road to CouchDB 2.0 here. 

CouchDB 2.0 will ship with Fauxton, the new CouchDB web interface. Fauxton is a single–page application to make managing CouchDB 2.0 as easy as possible. Some of Fauxton’s new features allow users to manage document conflicts, create and query Mango indexes, set up a new cluster, and many more (I don’t want to spoil all the fun before you try it). We have also improved the user experience for all the functionality previously supported in Futon.

Fauxton was started by Cloudant. They had the idea of building a very modular dashboard that could be used in Fauxton, and also be used for the Cloudant service. This has worked even better than originally anticipated. Fauxton’s modular design allows anyone to customise the build and select which features they want enabled, so it can be used in PouchDB-server, PouchDB Inspector, AvanceDB, and anywhere else where the CouchDB http protocol is supported. 

Originally we wrote Fauxton in Backbone.js, but we have now transitioned it to React.js and Flux. At this point, there are only a few small components still built in Backbone. Changing to React has been a fantastic move, as we have found it easier to build out new functionality and we have improved the stability of Fauxton by significantly increasing the test coverage at the same time.

We have some exciting plans for Fauxton as we continue to develop it past CouchDB 2.0. There’s a new replication interface (that might land in time for 2.0). We have a new tabular design planned that will unify the look of Fauxton and give a bit more space for some of the more complex interfaces. We will also be doing plenty of internal improvements to the codebase, CSS, and user experience as we go.

If you would like to try out Fauxton, download the latest RC, navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils. Or you can npm install fauxton.

Fauxton wouldn’t have shipped without the amazing contributions of many developers, designers and testers. Thank you for all your hard work.

Garren Smith is the founder of Red Comet Labs and an Apache CouchDB PMC member.

You can download the latest release candidate from http://couchdb.apache.org/release-candidate/2.0/. Files with -RC in their name a special release candidate tags, and the files with the git hash in their name are builds off of every commit to CouchDB master.

We are inviting the community to thoroughly test their applications with CouchDB 2.0 release candidates. See the testing and setup instructions for more details.