I have a Neo4j database containing words from a dictionary. If a query is made using a word not in the dictionary (such as a mis-spelled word), I want the query to return just the missing words.
I can do the opposite. This query returns words from the database that are correctly spelled:
MATCH (w:Word)
WHERE w.spelling IN ["good","words","plus","twoo","that","are","mispleled"]
RETURN w.spelling AS word
Can I write a query that will return something like ["twoo","mispleled"]? Or do I have to use a query like the one above, and check in the application itself which words have not been matched?
You can do this without OPTIONAL MATCH:
WITH ["good", "words", "plus", "twoo", "that", "are", "mispleled"] AS words
MATCH (word:Word) WHERE word.spelling IN words
WITH words, COLLECT(word.spelling) AS matched
RETURN [x IN words WHERE NOT x IN matched];
The advice about creating an index still applies.
[EDITED]
This might work for you. {input_words} is a parameter that contains an array of the words you want to check.
UNWIND {input_words} AS in_word
OPTIONAL MATCH (w:Word { spelling: in_word })
RETURN REDUCE(s = [], x IN COLLECT({ w: w, in_word: in_word }) |
CASE WHEN x.w IS NULL THEN s + x.in_word ELSE s END) AS missing_word;
For efficiency, you should first create an index on :Word(spelling):
CREATE INDEX ON :Word(spelling);
Related
Hi All newbie here in Neo4J,
I am trying to return keys or properties using the following simple query in the neo4J broswer environment.
MATCH (n:movies),(m:people)
RETURN properties(n,m)
What I am trying to achieve is to return the properties for both the movies and people nodes
However, I would always get an error
Too many parameters for function 'properties' (line 2, column 9 (offset: 36))
" RETURN properties(n,m)"
I have tried,
MATCH (n:movies),(m:people)
RETURN properties(k) in [n,m]
The error I would get
Variable `k` not defined (line 2, column 20 (offset: 47))
" RETURN properties(k) in [n,m]"
I am trying to pass a list here into k but NEO4J is not permitting me to do so. Is it even possible to pass a list into the function properties() ??
Thank you in advance.
The properties function takes exactly one node or a relationship as input.
MATCH (n:movies),(m:people) RETURN properties(n), properties(m)
will create a Cartesian Product.
i.e. If you have five movies and ten people, you will get a result of all 50 combinations.
If you aren't looking for a cartesian product, you would have to define a specific pattern or restrict the MATCH clause further.
If you want just the individual properties without combining them, consider Union.
MATCH (n:Movie)
RETURN properties(n) as `Properties`
UNION ALL
MATCH (m:Person)
RETURN properties(m) as `Properties`
Why am I using aliases for a seemingly simple query? To avoid this:
All sub queries in an UNION must have the same column names (line 3,
column 1 (offset: 39))
For working with lists:
The collect function lets you create/construct a list from the results while UNWIND expands a list into a sequence of rows.
properties() only takes one argument, you can try
MATCH (n:movies),(m:people) RETURN properties(n) as prop_n, properties(m) as prop_m
or more optimal query would be
MATCH (n:movies) optional match (m:people) RETURN properties(n) as prop_n, properties(m) as prop_m
MATCH (n:movies),(m:people)
RETURN properties(k) in [n,m]
since you have not defined k so you are getting the error. Also according to doc properites() takes "An expression that returns a relationship, a node, or a map" as an argument. Your query is not supported.
I'm having trouble with lists in neo4j. I need to go through a list and compare each element with a property of another node. I tried something like this
MATCH (C:Courses),(S:Student)
WHERE
C.courseid = "8" AND
S.userid = FOREACH(l IN SPLIT(C.students,",")
CREATE (C)<-[E:enrolled]-(S)
RETURN E
where C.students is a string of values separated with ",". FOREACH was the only function that I found to do this, but I don't think I can use it that way. Any ideas of how I can do that?
This query should do what you intended:
MATCH (c:Courses)
WHERE c.courseid = '8'
MATCH (s:Student)
WHERE s.userid IN SPLIT(c.students, ',')
CREATE (c)<-[e:enrolled]-(s)
RETURN e
If you have a significant number of courses or students, then you should also create indexes for :Courses(courseid) and/or :Student(userid).
I'm looking for a way to combine the Cypher "IN" and "STARTS WITH" query. In other words I'm looking for a way to look up nodes that start with specific string sequences that are provided as Array using IN.
The goal is to have the query run in as less as possible calls against the DB.
I browsed the documentation and played around with Neo4j a bit but wasn't able to combine the following two queries into one:
MATCH (a:Node_type_A)-[]->(b:Node_type_B)
WHERE a.prop_A IN [...Array of Strings]
RETURN a.prop_A, COLLECT ({result_b: b.prop_B})
and
MATCH (a:Node_type_A)-[]->(b:Node_type_B)
WHERE a.prop_A STARTS WITH 'String'
RETURN a.prop_A, b.prop_B
Is there a way to combine these two approaches?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Krid
You'll want to make sure there is an index or unique constraint (whichever is appropriate) on your :Node_type_A(prop_A) to speed up your lookups.
If I'm reading your requirements right, this query may work for you, adding your input strings as appropriate (parameterize them if you can).
WITH [...] as inputs
UNWIND inputs as input
// each string in inputs is now on its own row
MATCH (a:Node_type_A)
WHERE a.prop_A STARTS WITH input
// should be an fast index lookup for each input string
WITH a
MATCH (a)-[]->(b:Node_type_B)
RETURN a.prop_A, COLLECT ({result_b: b.prop_B})
Something like this should work:
MATCH (a:Node_type_A)-[]->(b:Node_type_B)
WITH a.prop_A AS pa, b.prop_B AS pb
WITH pa, pb,
REDUCE(s = [], x IN ['a','b','c'] |
CASE WHEN pa STARTS WITH x THEN s + pb ELSE s END) AS pbs
RETURN pa, pbs;
Anyone know of a fast way to query multiple paths in Neo4j ?
Lets say I have movie nodes that can have a type that I want to match (this is psuedo-code)
MATCH
(m:Movie)<-[:TYPE]-(g:Genre { name:'action' })
OR
(m:Movie)<-[:TYPE]-(x:Genre)<-[:G_TYPE*1..3]-(g:Genre { name:'action' })
(m)-[:SUBGENRE]->(sg:SubGenre {name: 'comedy'})
OR
(m)-[:SUBGENRE]->(x)<-[:SUB_TYPE*1..3]-(sg:SubGenre {name: 'comedy'})
The problem is, the first "m:Movie" nodes to be matched must match one of the paths specified, and the second SubGenre is depenedent on the first match.
I can make a query that works using MATCH and WHERE, but its really slow (30 seconds with a small 20MB dataset).
The problem is, I don't know how to OR match in Neo4j with other OR matches hanging off of the first results.
If I use WHERE, then I have to declare all the nodes used in any of the statements, in the initial MATCH which makes the query slow (since you cannot introduce new nodes in a WHERE)
Anyone know an elegant way to solve this ?? Thanks !
You can try a variable length path with a minimal length of 0:
MATCH
(m:Movie)<-[:TYPE|:SUBGENRE*0..4]-(g)
WHERE g:Genre and g.name = 'action' OR g:SubGenre and g.name='comedy'
For the query to use an index to find your genre / subgenre I recommend a UNION query though.
MATCH
(m:Movie)<-[:TYPE*0..4]-(g:Genre { name:'action' })
RETURN distinct m
UNION
(m:Movie)-[:SUBGENRE]->(x)<-[:SUB_TYPE*1..3]-(sg:SubGenre {name: 'comedy'})
RETURN distinct m
Perhaps the OPTIONAL MATCH clause might help here. OPTIONAL MATCH beavior is similar to the MATCH statement, except that instead of an all-or-none pattern matching approach, any elements of the pattern that do not match the pattern specific in the statement are bound to null.
For example, to match on a movie, its genre and a possible sub-genre:
OPTIONAL MATCH (m:Movie)-[:IS_GENRE]->(g:Genre)<-[:IS_SUBGENRE]-(sub:Genre)
WHERE m.title = "The Matrix"
RETURN m, g, sub
This will return the movie node, the genre node and if it exists, the sub-genre. If there is no sub-genre then it will return null for sub. You can use variable length paths as you have above as well with OPTIONAL MATCH.
[EDITED]
The following MATCH clause should be equivalent to your pseudocode. There is also a USING INDEX clause that assumes you have first created an index on :SubGenre(name), for efficiency. (You could use an index on :Genre(name) instead, if Genre nodes are more numerous than SubGenre nodes.)
MATCH
(m:Movie)<-[:TYPE*0..4]-(g:Genre { name:'action' }),
(m)-[:SUBGENRE]->()<-[:SUB_TYPE*0..3]-(sg:SubGenre { name: 'comedy' })
USING INDEX sg:SubGenre(name)
Here is a console that shows the results for some sample data.
I'd like to pull and combine data from several different paths that share a path at the beginning, not all of which might exist. For example, I'd like to do something like this:
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)-[:FETCHING]->(data)
RETURN data.attribute
UNION ALL
MATCH (s)-[:OPTIONAL]->(o:OtherData)
RETURN o.attribute;
so that it doesn't retrace the path up to s. I can't actually do this, though, because UNION separates queries and the (s)-[:OPTIONAL] in the second part will match anything with an outgoing OPTIONAL relation; the s is a loose handle.
Is there a better way of doing this than repeating the path:
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)-[:FETCHING]->(data)
RETURN data.attribute
UNION ALL
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)-[:OPTIONAL]->(o:OtherData)
RETURN o.attribute;
I made a few attempts using WITH, but they all either caused the query to return nothing if any part failed, or I could not get them to line up into a single column and instead got rows with redundant data, or (with multiple, nested WITHs, which I'm not sure about the scoping of) just fetching everything.
Have you looked at the semantics of an optional match? So you can match to s, beyond s and your optional component. Something like:
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)
MATCH (s)-[:FETCHING]->(data)
OPTIONAL MATCH (s)-[:OPTIONAL]->(otherData)
RETURN data.attribute, otherData.attribute
Sorry I missed the importance of a single column, is it really important?
You can gather the vaues into a single collection :
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)
MATCH (s)-[:FETCHING]->(data)
OPTIONAL MATCH (s)-[:OPTIONAL]->(otherData)
RETURN [data.attribute] + COLLECT(otherData.attribute)
But doesn't this work for a single column:
MATCH (:Complex)-[:PATH]->(s:Somewhere)
MATCH (s)-[:FETCHING]->(data)
OPTIONAL MATCH (s)-[:OPTIONAL]->(otherData)
WITH [data.attribute] + COLLECT(otherData.attribute) as col
RETURN UNWIND col AS val