[daleharvey]

Your backend can be a reverse proxy that authenticates requests then passes them off to CouchDB (or PouchDB, since that also runs on the server). I have an example up @ https://github.com/daleharvey/noted. The server is 200 lines and does signup / email authentication etc.

[yatsyk]

This server can't prevent authenticated user from uploading huge document of running expensive query.

[Volundr]

Any reverse proxy can limit the the size of a document upload. Even just plain NGINX can do that. Just set the client max body size.

As for queries, it kind of depends on your model. Mango queries are pretty limited (no joins, no arbitrary filters), so it's not necessarily as easy as you think to write one that hosed performance. A client could of course write one that doesn't use an index, which may or may not be a concern.

An easy option if it is though is just don't expose the `_find` endpoint, which effectively limits your users to the map/reduce queries you've written (unless you give them admin they don't have the ability to create their own).

[daleharvey]

A popular model is for the clients to run the queries locally, the server doesnt need to expose any query endpoints, only the ones necessary for replication.

[yatsyk]

Is it any documents that describes secure couchdb architecture? Most of the articles I find are limited to authentication and basic permissions.

[Volundr]

What kind of document are you looking for here? There is [1], but yeah, that covers access controls. As do the MongoDB [2] and Postgres [3] documents.

I feel like your thinking about Couch as exposing your entire PostgreSQL DB to the internet, whereas with couch, a common model is to have a single database per user. In the Postgres model, providing the end user with any direct access is a nightmare, because every other users data is in there and I have to keep other users from viewing/modifying it. In Couch, you give them access to their database and only their database, that's how you isolate users.

[1]https://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/intro/security.html

[2]https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/security/

[3]https://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.0/security.htm [3]

[yatsyk]

> What kind of document are you looking for here? > There is [1], but yeah, that covers access controls. As do the MongoDB [2] and Postgres [3] documents.

Mongo and postgress usually is not accessible for clients only for backend. Security handled by backend mostly and there is a plenty of resources how to implement secure server side applications which discusses attack vectors and how to make secure apps. Thankfully to this thread I’ve got few good ideas, that may help to design secure couchdb architecture (such as remove _find endpoint) but I’ve not seen any in-depth document about couchdb.

> I feel like your thinking about Couch as exposing your entire PostgreSQL DB to the internet

No, why do you think so?

[daleharvey]

I wasnt worried about that since it is a basic proof of concept, adding that would make it ~210 lines of code.