Creating unique relationships in Neo4j using py2neo get_or_create - neo4j

I am trying to create a graph using some nodes and relationships using py2noe. say, I'm creating a family tree.
I am creating nodes using get_or_create() so that my script doesn't create duplicates if I supply the same value again.
How can I do the same for a relationship? I can't find any reference to a get_or_create() like function for a relationship.
I want to publish (Joe)-[:son]->(John)
the first time it creates 2 nodes joe and john and a link between them.
if I re run my script, as the nodes are unique, they aren't published but a new relationship is created.
This gives me a graph with 2 nodes and n relationships where n is the number of times I run the script.
I also tried using cypher and I get the same issue. It keeps on creating relationships.
Can anyone suggest me a way to solve this problem?
Thanks.

I don't know py2neo (so there may be a wrapper for this function), but the way to achieve that would be using a Cypher MERGE which it looks like you have to run using the raw Cypher statement:
cypher_merge_result = neo4j.CypherQuery(graph_db,
"MERGE (s:Person{name:Joe})-[:SON]->(f:Person{name:John})")
That will create 2 Person nodes and 1 SON relationship, no matter how many times that you run it.
Neo4J documentation is here and it is important to understand how it works as partial matches in the MERGE statement will cause the whole pattern to be created. So if your Person nodes already exist you should match them in advance to avoid duplicate Persons being created. i.e
cypher_merge_result = neo4j.CypherQuery(graph_db,
"MATCH (s:Person{name:Joe}), (f:Person{name:John}) MERGE (s)-[:SON]->(f)")

Related

Create relationship with properties using a query in Cypher

I would like to know if this is possible. I have a query that produces a nice report showing a relationship between two entities through two other nodes. There can be more than one path. I now want to create a direct relationship between those two nodes and count the number of paths and sum based upon data in the nodes in between. the report query is below.
match (bo:BuyerAgency)<-[:IS_FOR_BO]-(sol:Solicitation)-[:SELECTED]->(prop:Proposal)<-[:OWNS_BID]-(so:VendorOrg)
where sol.currStatus='Awarded'
return bo.AgencyName, count(sol.Number) as awards, so.orgName, sum(prop.finalPrice) as awardVolume;
What I want to do is similar to below which will not work.
match (bo:BuyerAgency)<-[:IS_FOR_BO]-(sol:Solicitation)-[:SELECTED]->(prop:Proposal)<-[:OWNS_BID]-(so:VendorOrg)
where sol.currStatus='Awarded'
create (bo)-[:HAS_AWARDED{awardCount: count(sol.Number), awardVolume: sum(prop.finalPrice)}]->(so);
If I remove the properties for the relationship, it works but want to add the properties without to much programing.
I am using the most recent version of Neo4j 3.2.
thanks
The problem here is you are trying to use count() and sum() functions in an invalid context. The below query should work:
match (bo:BuyerAgency)<-[:IS_FOR_BO]-(sol:Solicitation)-[:SELECTED]->(prop:Proposal)<-[:OWNS_BID]-(so:VendorOrg)
where sol.currStatus='Awarded'
with bo, so, count(sol.Number) as count_sol, sum(prop.finalPrice) as sum_finalPrice
create (bo)-[:HAS_AWARDED{awardCount: count_sol, awardVolume: sum_finalPrice}]->(so);
This query uses WITH to pass bo, so and the result of the aggregation functions count(sol.Number) and sum(prop.finalPrice) to the next context. After, these values are used to create the new relation between bo and so.

Neo4j relationships without nodes throw error

Due to a unforeseen shutdown (and /or and error in my code) I have relationships in the database without nodes attached to it.
I think what happened was that used a MATCH statement to look up a node and subsequently a MERGE to create a relationship. For some reasons however the Match did not return a results, but the MERGE did create a relationship (apparently with a non existing node). See example below:
MATCH (image:Image {id:{param}.id})
FOREACH (tagName in {param}.tags | MERGE (tag:Tag {tag:tagName}) MERGE (image)-[:IS_TAGGED_AS]->(tag) // Here it creates a relationship even if no matching image is found.
)
When I run a simple query I receive the following message:
While loading relationships for Node[xx] a Relationship[xx] was encountered that had startNode: 0 and endNode: 0, i.e. which had neither start nor end node as the node we're loading relationships for
I can reference the node and the relationship by Id (although the relationship does not return results) but can't Delete them.
Is there anything I can do to fix this?
Ideally I create a query to select all 'bad' relationships and delete them.
I am working on Neo4j 2.3.0.
Are you sure that relationships can be created without nodes? That doesn't make sense to me. The way MERGE works is that it will match a node or relationship if it exists, otherwise it will try create a new one.
If you add PROFILE to the start of your query in the Neo4j Browser, you can see the execution plan for a query. You will see that nodes are matched first and then the relationships are matched and/or created afterwards.

Returning on-the-fly relationship in graph form in Neo4j

I'm pretty new to Neo4j and graph DBs in general, and have been playing around with it for the last few days. I've now hit something I'm stumped on: I'm trying to create a "temporary" relationship between two disjoint nodes just for the sake of a RETURN, then not store this relationship within the DB afterwards.
The dataset I'm using is a graph of Movie and Person nodes provided in one of the basic Neo4j built-in tutorials. My query is currently as follows:
MATCH (p1:Person)-[r1:ACTED_IN]-(m1:Movie)-[r2:ACTED_IN]-(p2:Person)
WHERE p1.name="Kevin Bacon"
RETURN {start:p1,rel:"COSTAR",end:p2}
What I'd ultimately like to see is a central "Kevin Bacon" node with COSTAR relationships to a series of Person nodes around it, without any Movie nodes or ACTED_IN relationships being displayed. The query above does show the COSTAR relationship in the returned rows, but it does not appear on the graph itself; I've attached a few screenshots of what I'm seeing.
The only other idea I have is to use the MERGE keyword to create a COSTAR relationship, but (as I understand it) this actually stores the relationship in the DB which is what I'm trying to avoid.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
The neo4j Browser only visualizes nodes and relationships that actually exist in the DB. So, there is no way to do what you want without actually creating the COSTAR relationships, visualizing the result in the Browser, and then deleting all the COSTAR relationships.
As a workaround you could simply display the nodes of all of Kevin Bacon's costars, like this:
MATCH (p1:Person)-[:ACTED_IN]-(:Movie)-[:ACTED_IN]-(p2:Person)
WHERE p1.name="Kevin Bacon"
RETURN DISTINCT p2;
So you want the relationships to appear in the graph visualization in the Neo4j browser but not store these relationships in the graph itself? I can't think of a way to make that happen (without hacking it), but would deleting the relationships after you are done generating the visual work?
Query to create COSTAR relationships:
MATCH (p1:Person)-[r1:ACTED_IN]-(m1:Movie)-[r2:ACTED_IN]-(p2:Person)
WHERE p1.name="Kevin Bacon"
CREATE UNIQUE (p1)<-[:COSTAR]-(p2);
Execute your query to populate the graph in Neo4j Browser...
Then to delete the COSTAR relationships:
MATCH (:Person)-[r:COSTAR]-(:Person)
DELETE r;
The best way to achieve this (now... 6 years later) is with the gds.graph.create.* functions (assuming you load GDS)
https://neo4j.com/docs/graph-data-science/current/graph-create/
With a graph as simple as this, gds.graph.create(...) would be enough (creating COSTAR for all co-starrings)
Or, if you wanted to do some constraining, gds.graph.create.cypher(...)
The in-memory graph projection feels like what you wanted to achieve - it persists only as long as the DBMS is active, or until you call gds.graph.drop(...)

Cypher: Create relationships between nodes based on a common property key id

I'm brand new to Cypher (and Stackoverflow) and am having trouble creating relationships between nodes based on share property keys.
I would like to do something like this:
MATCH (a:Person)-->()<--(b:Country)
WHERE HAS (a.id) AND HAS (b.id) AND a.id=b.id
CREATE (a)-[:LIVES]->(b);
to create a relationship between Country node and Person nodes where they share the same id.
The above creates no errors when run but doesn't create any relationships either and I know that the ids should match.
Many thanks!!
EDIT:
I think I know what is going wrong - I'm asking to match nodes that have a relationship to eachother but no relationships are set up yet hence 0 results. I have now tried:
MATCH (a:Person),
(b:Country)
WHERE HAS (a.id) AND HAS (b.id) AND a.id=b.id
CREATE (a)-[:LIVES]->(b);
and the query is running. It's a big data set so might take a while......
That worked. Had to reduce the size of my data set (down from 64k nodes) as Neo4j was taking way too long to process but once I had a smaller set it worked fine.
One minor addition for future Googlers.
per the help files as of version 3.4
The has() function has been superseded by exists() and has been removed.
The new code should read
MATCH (a:Person),
(b:Country)
WHERE EXISTS (a.id) AND EXISTS (b.id) AND a.id=b.id
CREATE (a)-[:LIVES]->(b);

How to create a new relationship in Neo4j, starting from an existing one, using a Cypher query?

Is there a simple way to create a new relationship in Neo4j, starting from an existing one?
Starting from the actor-director-movie database used in the tutorials, what I would like to do is to get all the {(actor1),(actor2)} couples of nodes in the graph satisfying the relationships:
(actor1)-[:ACTED_IN]->(movie)<-[:ACTED_IN]-(actor2)
and use them to create a new relationship like:
(actor1)-[:ACTED_IN_THE_SAME_MOVIE_AS]-(actor2)
in whatever direction (I am interested in both directed and undirected graphs).
Is there a way to do this with a simple Cypher query?
Many thanks,
sTe
Using the sample movie dataset:
MATCH (actor1:Person)-[:ACTED_IN]->(:Movie)<-[:ACTED_IN]-(actor2:Person)
WITH actor1, actor2
MERGE (actor1)-[:ACTED_IN_THE_SAME_MOVIE_AS]-(actor2)
I'd do that :
MATCH (actor1)-[:ACTED_IN]->()<-[:ACTED_IN]-(actor2)
CREATE UNIQUE (actor1)-[:ACTED_IN_THE_SAME_MOVIE_AS]-(actor2)
which is basically what you said. Relations are uni-directional (no way around), but the api (Cypher queries or Traversal) can read them both ways (so it doesn't really matter which way your create them in some cases).
To check if what you did is ok, you can run the following :
MATCH (actor1)-[:ACTED_IN_SAME_MOVIE]-(actor2)
RETURN actor1, actor2

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