How to update a relation property in Neo4J Cypher? - neo4j

I have the following Neo4J Cypher query:
MATCH (u:User {uid: $userId})
UNWIND $contextNames as contextName
MERGE (context:Context {name:contextName.name,by:u.uid,uid:contextName.uid})
ON CREATE SET context.timestamp=$timestamp
MERGE (context)-[:BY{timestamp:$timestamp}]->(u)
The last string always creates a new relation between the context and the u node. However, what if I just want to update it? How do I integrate this logic into the query above?
Do I have to add WITH context,u before the MERGE and then add rel:BY into the query?
Or do MATCH (context)-[rel:BY.... and then update the rel?
Just looking for the most efficient "best practices" way to do that.
Thanks!

There are two possible situation which might occur:
A relation between context and u is already present
A relation between context and u is not yet present (this will happen when contextwas just created by merge)
When you run the following line
MERGE (context)-[:BY{timestamp:$timestamp}]->(u)
Neo4j will check if there is already a relation BY in place between context and u with the given timestamp value. If yes, no new relation will be created. I guess that the timestamp is not a proper identifier for matching a relation, especially since you write that you want to update it. Therefore, I recommend to update the query in the following way:
MATCH (u:User {uid: $userId})
UNWIND $contextNames as contextName
MERGE (context:Context {name:contextName.name,by:u.uid,uid:contextName.uid})
ON CREATE SET context.timestamp=$timestamp
MERGE (context)-[by:BY]->(u)
SET by.timestamp=$timestamp
This way, a relation will be created if not already present. Either way, the timestamp will be set to the specified value.

Related

Delete relationships and then add back to node neo4j

I would like to get a node, delete all outgoing relationships of a certain type and then add back relationships.
The problem I have is that once I grab the node, it still maintains it's previous relationships even after delete so instead of having 1 it keeps doubling whatever it has. 1->2->4->8 etc
Sample graph:
CREATE (a:Basic {name:'a'})
CREATE (b:Basic {name:'b'})
CREATE (c:Basic {name:'c'})
CREATE (a)-[:TO]->(b)
CREATE (a)-[:SO]->(c)
The query to delete the previous relationships and then add in the new relationships. (this is just a brief sample where in reality it wouldn't add back the same relationships, but more then likely point it to a different node).
MATCH (a:Basic {name:'a'})
WITH a
OPTIONAL MATCH (a)-[r:TO|SO]->()
DELETE r
WITH a
MATCH (b:Basic {name:'b'})
CREATE (a)-[:TO]->(b)
WITH a
MATCH (c:Basic {name:'c'})
CREATE (a)-[:SO]->(c)
If I change the CREATE to MERGE then it solves the problem, but it feels odd to have to merge when I know that I just deleted all the relationships. Is there a way to update "a" midway through the query so it reflects the changes? I would like to keep it in one query
The behavior you observed is due the subtle fact that the OPTIONAL MATCH clause generated 2 rows of data, which caused all subsequent operations to be done twice.
To force there to be only a single row of data after the DELETE clause, you can use WITH DISTINCT a (instead of WITH a) right after the DELETE clause, like this:
MATCH (a:Basic {name:'a'})
OPTIONAL MATCH (a)-[r:TO|SO]->()
DELETE r
WITH DISTINCT a
MATCH (b:Basic {name:'b'})
CREATE (a)-[:TO]->(b)
WITH a
MATCH (c:Basic {name:'c'})
CREATE (a)-[:SO]->(c)

Cypher 'Node Already Exists' issue with MERGE

I am preplexed on why I am getting an issue with this Cypher statment when I have a unique constraint on the address of the location node but am using a merge which should find that if it exists and only return the id for the rest of the statment. What am I missing?
Here is my statement:
MERGE(l:Location{location_name:"Starbucks", address:"36350 Van Dyke Ave", city: "Sterling Heights",state: "MI", zip_code:"48312",type:"location",room_number:"",long:-83.028889,lat:42.561152})
CREATE(m:Meetup{meet_date:1455984000,access:"Private",status:"Active",type:"project",did_happen:"",topic:"New features for StudyUup",agenda:"This is a brainstorming session to come with with new ideas for the companion website, StudyUup. Using MatchUup as the base, what should be added, removed, or modified? Bring your thinking caps and ideas!"})
WITH m,l
MATCH (g:Project{title_slug:"studyuup"}) MATCH (p:Person{username:"wkolcz"})
WITH m,l,g,p
MERGE (g)-[:CREATED {rating:0}]->(m)
MERGE (m)-[:MEETUP_AT {rating:0}]->(l)-[:HOSTED_MEETUP]->(m)
MERGE (m)<-[:ATTENDING]-(p)
RETURN id(m) as meeting_id
I am getting:
Node 416 already exists with label Location and property "address"=[36350 Van Dyke Ave]
You've encountered a common misunderstanding of MERGE. MERGE merges on everything you've specified within the single MERGE clause. So the order of operations are:
Search for a :Location node with all of the properties you've specified.
If found, return the node.
If not found, create the node.
Your problem occurs at step 3. Because a node with all of the properties you've specified does not exist, it goes to step 3 and tries to create a node with all of those properties. That's when your uniqueness constraint is violated.
The best practice is to merge on the property that you've constrained to be unique and then use SET to update the other properties. In your case:
MERGE (l:Location {address:"36350 Van Dyke Ave"})
SET l.location_name = "Starbucks",
l.city = "Sterling Heights"
...
The same logic is going to apply for the relationships you're merging later in the query. If the entire pattern doesn't exist, it's going to try to create the entire pattern. That's why you should stick to the best practice of:
MERGE (node1:Label1 {unique_property: "value"})
MERGE (node2:Label2 {unique_property: "value"})
MERGE (node1)-[:REL]-(node2)

how to create relationships in loop in neo4j

I am trying to create friend relationship to all the ids in the list but I am getting an error:
Node already exists with label User and property "id"=[2]
Neo.ClientError.Schema.ConstraintViolation
Basically these ids already exist and I just want to create friend relationship to multiple ids at once using for-each.How can I achieve this or is there any other way to do the same? I really appreciate any help.
MATCH (u:User {id:"3"})
FOREACH (id in ["2","4","5"] |
MERGE (u)-[:FRIEND]->(:User {id:id}))
The problem is the usage of MERGE. Merge needs you to bind both ends of the relationship if you don't want either node recreated in the absence of the pattern existing between them.
u is bound, but because there is no FRIEND relation from u to the other users, the entire pattern is created from u, with the FRIEND relation and a new User node.
You can't MATCH the user in FOREACH so instead, use
MATCH (u:User {id:"3"})
match (fb:User)
where fb.id in ["2","4","5"]
MERGE (u)-[:FRIEND]->(fb)
As the users already exist, there is a more simple way :
MATCH (u:User {id:"3"})
MATCH (friends:User) WHERE friends.id IN ["2","4","5"]
MERGE (u)-[:FRIEND]->(friends)

Cypher, create unique relationship for one node

I want to add a "created by" relationship on nodes in my database. Any node should be able of having this relationship but there can never be more than one.
Right now my query looks something like this:
MATCH (u:User {email: 'my#mail.com'})
MERGE (n:Node {name: 'Node name'})
ON CREATE SET n.name='Node name', n.attribute='value'
CREATE UNIQUE (n)-[:CREATED_BY {date: '2015-02-23'}]->(u)
RETURN n
As I have understood Cypher there is no way to achieve what I want, the current query will only make sure there are no unique relationships based on TWO nodes, not ONE. So, this will create more CREATED_BY relationships when run for another User and I want to limit the outgoing CREATED_BY relationship to just one for all nodes.
Is there a way to achieve this without running multiple queries involving program logic?
Thanks.
Update
I tried to simplyfy the query by removing implementation details, if it helps here's the updated query based on cybersams response.
MERGE (c:Company {name: 'Test Company'})
ON CREATE SET c.uuid='db764628-5695-40ee-92a7-6b750854ebfa', c.created_at='2015-02-23 23:08:15', c.updated_at='2015-02-23 23:08:15'
WITH c
OPTIONAL MATCH (c)
WHERE NOT (c)-[:CREATED_BY]-()
CREATE (c)-[:CREATED_BY {date: '2015-02-23 23:08:15'}]->(u:User {token: '32ba9d2a2367131cecc53c310cfcdd62413bf18e8048c496ea69257822c0ee53'})
RETURN c
Still not working as expected.
Update #2
I ended up splitting this into two queries.
The problem I found was that there was two possible outcomes as I noticed.
The CREATED_BY relationship was created and (n) was returned using OPTIONAL MATCH, this relationship would always be created if it didn't already exist between (n) and (u), so when changing the email attribute it would re-create the relationship.
The Node (n) was not found (because of not using OPTIONAL MATCH and the WHERE NOT (c)-[:CREATED_BY]-() clause), resulting in no relationship created (yay!) but without getting the (n) back the MERGE query looses all it's meaning I think.
My Solution was the following two queries:
MERGE (n:Node {name: 'Name'})
ON CREATE SET
SET n.attribute='value'
WITH n
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r:CREATED_BY]-()
RETURN c, r
Then I had program logic check the value of r, if there was no relationship I would run the second query.
MATCH (n:Node {name: 'Name'})
MATCH (u:User {email: 'my#email.com'})
CREATE UNIQUE (n)-[:CREATED_BY {date: '2015-02-23'}]->(u)
RETURN n
Unfortunately I couldn't find any real solution to combining this in one single query with Cypher. Sam, thanks! I've selected your answer even though it didn't quite solve my problem, but it was very close.
This should work for you:
MERGE (n:Node {name: 'Node name'})
ON CREATE SET n.attribute='value'
WITH n
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)
WHERE NOT (n)-[:CREATED_BY]->()
CREATE UNIQUE (n)-[:CREATED_BY {date: '2015-02-23'}]->(:User {email: 'my#mail.com'})
RETURN n;
I've removed the starting MATCH clause (because I presume you want to create a CREATED_BY relationship even when that User does not yet exist in the DB), and simplified the ON CREATE to remove the redundant setting of the name property.
I have also added an OPTIONAL MATCH that will only match an n node that does not already have an outgoing CREATED_BY relationship, followed by a CREATE UNIQUE clause that fully specifies the User node.

Making a relation in neo4j

I am not sure what I am doing wrong here, so here is how I create nodes
CREATE (urlnode_1:UrlNode {url:'url1', nodenumber:1})
CREATE (urlnode_2:UrlNode {url:'url2', nodenumber:2})
I create relations as follows
CREATE
(urlnode_1)-[:OutLink {anchor_text:['MY']}]->(urlnode_2)
Two nodes are created successfully first, now on running the code to create the relation, I would have liked the relation to exist between the two created nodes but it creates two new nodes say 3 and 4 and shows a relation between them. What am i doing wrong here?
To guide you the best way I can, let's sum up some Neo4j basics concerning node and relationships creation :
A node can have one or more labels, labels are meaned to group the nodes by domain (User, Speaker, Company, etc..see a label as a table name for e.g. ). A node can also have properties.
A relationship can have only ONE type, relationships are organizing the graph. Relationships can also have properties.
To create a node, you can use the CREATE writing clause :
CREATE (n:Person {firstname: 'John'})
The CREATE statement will not check if other nodes with same label and properties already exists, it will just create a new node
Relationships can also be created with the same clause :
MATCH (n:Person {firstname: 'John'}), (p:Person {firstname: 'Pierre'})
CREATE (n)-[:KNOWS]->(p)
A complete pattern can also be created in one go :
CREATE (n:Person {name:'Chris'})-[:KNOWS]->(p:Person {name:'Oliver'})
REMINDER : CREATE will not check for existing nodes.
--- AND NOW MERGE ---
MERGE will lazily check for existing nodes, see him as a MATCH OR CREATE clause :
MERGE (n:Person {firstname:'Fred'})
If the node with label Person and firstname Fred does not exist, the node will be created, otherwise nothing will happen. This is where come the handy ON MATCH and ON CREATE mentionned by #joslinm .
If you run this query multiple times after the node creation, your graph will not change, if you know the http protocol, you can say that MERGE is an indempotent request.
Be aware that, MERGE will ensure that an entire pattern exist in the database, by creating it if it does not already exist, meaning that if you do MERGE with a complete pattern, the entire pattern will be looked up for existence, not a single node :
Say a node with label Person and name property with value 'John' already exist in the db :
MERGE (n:Person {name:'John'})
will not affect the graph
However :
MERGE (n:Person {name:'John'})-[:KNOWS]->(:Person {name:'Nathalia'})
A new John node will be created, because the entire pattern does not exist.
It is recommended to use MERGE incrementally :
MERGE (n:Person {name:'John'})
MERGE (p:Person {name:'Nathalia'})
MERGE (n)-[:KNOWS]->(p)
If you want to know more about the MERGE clause, I can highly recommend you this wonderful article from Luanne on GraphAware : http://graphaware.com/neo4j/2014/07/31/cypher-merge-explained.html
Chris
If you create a relationship, a new one will get created every single time. They are not inherently unique. It sounds like you'd rather be merging the relationship; i.e., if they relationship is there, match it, if not, create it.
The merge syntax for it is as follows:
MERGE (a:Node)-[:LIKES]->(b:Node)
ON
MATCH SET a.msg = 'I matched!'
ON
CREATE SET a.msg = 'I created!'
RETURN a
You can try it out here: http://console.neo4j.org/
You'll notice that first the msg will be "I created!" then after it matches, it will be "I matched!"

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