How to select distinct graph nodes by property - neo4j

Question

I have a database including PlayStation games and it contains games from all regions and platforms. Some of the games from different regions have the same title and platform so I would like to filter out "duplicates". At this time, I don't have region information on each game so the best I can do is filter out by game name and platform.
Is it possible to select distinct nodes by property? I seem to remember that you can return distinct rows based on a column in SQL, but it seems that Cypher applies distinct to the entire row and not just a specific column.
I would like to achieve something like the following:
MATCH (game:PSNGame) RETURN game WHERE distinct game.TitleName, distinct game.Platforms
The above query if it were valid would return all PSNGame nodes with a distinct TitleName and Platforms combination. Since the above query is not valid Cypher, I have tried returning a list of distinct TitleName/Platforms where distinct is applied to both columns.
The query I have for returning the distinct TitleName/Platforms list looks like this:
MATCH (game:PSNGame) RETURN distinct game.TitleName, game.Platforms
The JSON response from Neo4j is similar to this:
[["God of War", ["PS3", "PSVITA"]], ["God of War II", ["PS3", "PSVITA"]]]
The problem I'm facing is that the JSON response is not really an object with properties. It's more of an array of arrays. If I could get the response to be more like an object, I could deserialize without issues. I tried to deserialize as an IList<PsnGame>, but haven't had much luck.
Here's my POCO for the IList<PsnGame> implementation:
public class PsnGame
{
public string TitleName { get; set; }
public string[] Platforms { get; set; }
}
EDIT:
Here is the simplest example of my Neo4jClient query:
// helper function for handling searching by name and platform
private ICypherFluentQuery BuildPSNGamesQuery(string gameName, string platform)
{
var query = client.Cypher
.Match("(g:PSNGame)");
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(gameName))
{
query = query.Where($"g.TitleName =~ \"(?i).*{gameName}.*\"");
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(platform) && platform.ToLower() != "all")
{
query = query.AndWhere($"\"{platform}\" in g.Platforms");
}
}
else
{
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(platform) && platform.ToLower() != "all")
{
query = query.Where($"\"{platform}\" in g.Platforms");
}
}
return query;
}
Distinct games:
var distinctGames = await BuildPSNGamesQuery(gameName, platform)
.With("DISTINCT g.TitleName AS TitleName, g.Platforms AS Platforms")
.With("{ TitleName: TitleName, Platforms: Platforms } as Games")
.OrderBy("TitleName")
.Return<PsnGame>("Games")
.Skip((pageNumber - 1) * pageSize)
.Limit(pageSize)
.ResultsAsync;
All games (somehow need to filter based on previous query):
var results = await BuildPSNGamesQuery(gameName, platform)
.Return(g => new Models.PSN.Composite.PsnGame
{
Game = g.As<PsnGame>()
})
.OrderBy("g.TitleName")
.Skip((pageNumber - 1) * pageSize)
.Limit(pageSize)
.ResultsAsync;
By using a map, I'm able to return the TitleName/Platforms pairing that I want, but I suspect I'll need to do a collect on the Platforms to get all platforms for a particular game title. Then I can filter the entire games list by the distinctGames that I return. However, I would prefer to perform a request and merge the queries to reduce HTTP traffic.
An example of duplicates can be seen on my website here:
https://www.gamerfootprint.com/#/games/ps
Also, the data for duplicates looks something like this:
MATCH (n:PSNGame)
WHERE n.TitleName = '1001 Spikes'
RETURN n.TitleName, n.Platforms LIMIT 25
JSON:
{
"columns":[
"n.TitleName",
"n.Platforms"
],
"data":[
{
"row":[
"1001 Spikes",
[
"PSVITA"
]
],
"graph":{
"nodes":[
],
"relationships":[
]
}
},
{
"row":[
"1001 Spikes",
[
"PS4"
]
],
"graph":{
"nodes":[
],
"relationships":[
]
}
}
],
"stats":{
"contains_updates":false,
"nodes_created":0,
"nodes_deleted":0,
"properties_set":0,
"relationships_created":0,
"relationship_deleted":0,
"labels_added":0,
"labels_removed":0,
"indexes_added":0,
"indexes_removed":0,
"constraints_added":0,
"constraints_removed":0
}
}
EDIT: 10-31-15
I was able to get distinct game title and platforms returning with the platforms for each game rolled up into a single collection. My new query is the following:
MATCH (game:PSNGame)
WITH DISTINCT game.TitleName as TitleName,
game.Platforms as coll UNWIND coll as Platforms
WITH TitleName as TitleName, COLLECT(DISTINCT Platforms) as Platforms
RETURN TitleName, Platforms
ORDER BY TitleName
Here is a small subset of the results:
{
"columns":[
"TitleName",
"Platforms"
],
"data":[
{
"row":[
"1001 Spikes",
[
"PSVITA",
"PS4"
]
],
"graph":{
"nodes":[
],
"relationships":[
]
}
}
],
"stats":{
"contains_updates":false,
"nodes_created":0,
"nodes_deleted":0,
"properties_set":0,
"relationships_created":0,
"relationship_deleted":0,
"labels_added":0,
"labels_removed":0,
"indexes_added":0,
"indexes_removed":0,
"constraints_added":0,
"constraints_removed":0
}
}
Finally, 1001 Spikes is in the list once and has both PS VITA and PS4 listed as platforms. Now, I need to figure out how to grab the full game nodes and filter against the above query.

Answer 1

try this one:
MATCH (game:PSNGame)
with game, collect([game.TitleName, game.Platforms]) as wow
return distinct(wow)

Answer 2

If I understand you correctly, you want to select different nodes by property and remove duplicates? If so, it would be something like this:
MATCH (game:PSNGame {property:'value'}) RETURN DISTINCT game.property
That should remove duplicates and return your node by property.