Address and ETag of a Document

All documents in ArangoDB have a document handle. This handle uniquely identifies a document. Any document can be retrieved using its unique URI:

http://server:port/_api/document/<document-handle>

For example, assumed that the document handle, which is stored in the _id attribute of the document, is demo/362549736, then the URL of that document is:

http://localhost:8529/_api/document/demo/362549736

The above URL scheme does not specify a database name explicitly, so the default database will be used. To explicitly specify the database context, use the following URL schema:

http://server:port/_db/<database-name>/_api/document/<document-handle>

Example:

http://localhost:8529/_db/mydb/_api/document/demo/362549736

Note: The following examples use the short URL format for brevity.

Each document also has a document revision or Etag with is returned in the “ETag” HTTP header when requesting a document.

If you obtain a document using GET and you want to check if a newer revision is available, then you can use the If-None-Match header. If the document is unchanged, a HTTP 412 (precondition failed) error is returned.

If you want to update or delete a document, then you can use the If-Match header. If the document has changed, then the operation is aborted and a HTTP 412 error is returned.