How to restore a deleted document on Cloudant

gistfile1.txt

$ acurl 'https://davisp.cloudant.com/test-db/_all_docs?keys=["foo"]' | python -m json.tool
{
    "rows": [
        {
            "id": "foo",
            "key": "foo",
            "value": {
                "deleted": true,
                "rev": "2-eec205a9d413992850a6e32678485900"
            }
        }
    ],
    "total_rows": 7
}
$ acurl 'https://davisp.cloudant.com/test-db/foo?rev=2-eec205a9d413992850a6e32678485900&revs=true' | python -m json.tool
{
    "_deleted": true,
    "_id": "foo",
    "_rev": "2-eec205a9d413992850a6e32678485900",
    "_revisions": {
        "ids": [
            "eec205a9d413992850a6e32678485900",
            "967a00dff5e02add41819138abb3284d"
        ],
        "start": 2
    }
}
$ acurl https://davisp.cloudant.com/test-db/foo?rev=1-967a00dff5e02add41819138abb3284d | python -m json.tool
{
    "error": "not_found",
    "reason": "missing"
}
$ # A curious corner case
$ cat foo.json 
{
    "_id": "foo",
    "_rev": "2-eec205a9d413992850a6e32678485900",
    "stuff": "bar"
}
$ acurl -X PUT https://davisp.cloudant.com/test-db/foo -d @foo.json | python -m json.tool
{
    "error": "conflict",
    "reason": "Document update conflict."
}

In this particular case the previous revision is not_found which means this db has been compacted since the deletion. In this instance I would have been out of luck reviving the document. However, if that had returned a valid document it would have been as simple as copying the body, removing the _rev value and storing it back into the database.