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# 3. HTTP Range Requests

HTTP allows you to specify byte ranges for requests. This allows the implementation of resumable downloads and skippable audio and video streams alike. This is available for all attachments inside CouchDB.

This is just a real quick run through how this looks under the hood. Usually, you will have larger binary files to serve from CouchDB, like MP3s and videos, but to make things a little more obvious, I use a text file here (Note that I use the `application/octet-stream` Content-Type instead of `text/plain`).

    shell> cat file.txt
    My hovercraft is full of eels!

Now let’s store this text file as an attachment in CouchDB. First, we create a database:

    shell> curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:5984/test
    {"ok":true}

Then we create a new document and the file attachment in one go:

    shell> curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:5984/test/doc/file.txt \
                -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" -d@file.txt
    {"ok":true,"id":"doc","rev":"1-287a28fa680ae0c7fb4729bf0c6e0cf2"}

Now we can request the whole file easily:

    shell> curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5984/test/doc/file.txt
    My hovercraft is full of eels!

But say we only want the first 13 bytes:

    shell> curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5984/test/doc/file.txt \
                -H "Range: bytes=0-12"
    My hovercraft

HTTP supports many ways to specify single and even multiple byte ranges. Read all about it in RFC 2616.

Note

Databases that have been created with CouchDB 1.0.2 or earlier will support range requests in 1.3, but they are using a less-optimal algorithm. If you plan to make heavy use of this feature, make sure to compact your database with CouchDB 1.3 to take advantage of a better algorithm to find byte ranges.

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