A trigger is application logic or a business rule that is written in JavaScript. It looks similar to a function or method, but a trigger is only executed by the database engine when a document gets inserted, replaced, or deleted. Triggers can be useful, for example, to create an audit trail to keep track of all the changes in the system or to set default values for a document to be created.

The example trigger is a trigger that is fired before the actual insert (although triggers and their actual insert, replace, or delete actions on a document are inside one transaction) and checks for the first name. If it is not there or empty, it will set a default value. To test the trigger, we will also create a new property on the document affected.

The triggers get the property FirstName from the document involved (that is retrieved by request.GetBody()). If the property is not there or empty, it will set this FirstName property with the value TheDefaultFirstName. Additionally, a...