32.2. Hello World

Learn how to create and access nodes and relationships. For information on project setup, see Section 32.1, “Include Neo4j in your project”.

Remember, from Section 2.1, “What is a Graph Database?”, that a Neo4j graph consist of:

  • Nodes that are connected by
  • Relationships, with
  • Properties on both nodes and relationships.

All relationships have a type. For example, if the graph represents a social network, a relationship type could be KNOWS. If a relationship of the type KNOWS connects two nodes, that probably represents two people that know each other. A lot of the semantics (that is the meaning) of a graph is encoded in the relationship types of the application. And although relationships are directed they are equally well traversed regardless of which direction they are traversed.

[Tip]Tip

The source code of this example is found here: EmbeddedNeo4j.java

Prepare the database

Relationship types can be created by using an enum. In this example we only need a single relationship type. This is how to define it:

private static enum RelTypes implements RelationshipType
{
    KNOWS
}

We also prepare some variables to use:

GraphDatabaseService graphDb;
Node firstNode;
Node secondNode;
Relationship relationship;

The next step is to start the database server. Note that if the directory given for the database doesn’t already exist, it will be created.

graphDb = new GraphDatabaseFactory().newEmbeddedDatabase( DB_PATH );
registerShutdownHook( graphDb );

Note that starting a database server is an expensive operation, so don’t start up a new instance every time you need to interact with the database! The instance can be shared by multiple threads. Transactions are thread confined.

As seen, we register a shutdown hook that will make sure the database shuts down when the JVM exits. Now it’s time to interact with the database.

Wrap operations in a transaction

All operations have to be performed in a transaction. This is a conscious design decision, since we believe transaction demarcation to be an important part of working with a real enterprise database. Now, transaction handling in Neo4j is very easy:

try ( Transaction tx = graphDb.beginTx() )
{
    // Database operations go here
    tx.success();
}

For more information on transactions, see Chapter 16, Transaction Management and Java API for Transaction.

[Note]Note

For brevity, we do not spell out wrapping of operations in a transaction throughout the manual.

Create a small graph

Now, let’s create a few nodes. The API is very intuitive. Feel free to have a look at the Neo4j Javadocs. They’re included in the distribution, as well. Here’s how to create a small graph consisting of two nodes, connected with one relationship and some properties:

firstNode = graphDb.createNode();
firstNode.setProperty( "message", "Hello, " );
secondNode = graphDb.createNode();
secondNode.setProperty( "message", "World!" );

relationship = firstNode.createRelationshipTo( secondNode, RelTypes.KNOWS );
relationship.setProperty( "message", "brave Neo4j " );

We now have a graph that looks like this:

Figure 32.1. Hello World Graph

Hello-World-Graph-java.svg

Print the result

After we’ve created our graph, let’s read from it and print the result.

System.out.print( firstNode.getProperty( "message" ) );
System.out.print( relationship.getProperty( "message" ) );
System.out.print( secondNode.getProperty( "message" ) );

Which will output:

Hello, brave Neo4j World!

Remove the data

In this case we’ll remove the data before committing:

// let's remove the data
firstNode.getSingleRelationship( RelTypes.KNOWS, Direction.OUTGOING ).delete();
firstNode.delete();
secondNode.delete();

Note that deleting a node which still has relationships when the transaction commits will fail. This is to make sure relationships always have a start node and an end node.

Shut down the database server

Finally, shut down the database server when the application finishes:

graphDb.shutdown();