The Neo4j Manual v3.1.0-SNAPSHOT32.9. Traversal

This example shows how to use a path context holding a representation of a path.

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

Create a toy graph 

Node A = db.createNode();
Node B = db.createNode();
Node C = db.createNode();
Node D = db.createNode();

A.createRelationshipTo( C, REL2 );
C.createRelationshipTo( D, REL3 );
A.createRelationshipTo( B, REL1 );
B.createRelationshipTo( C, REL2 );

Now, the order of relationships (REL1 → REL2 → REL3) is stored in an ArrayList. Upon traversal, the Evaluator can check against it to ensure that only paths are included and returned that have the predefined order of relationships:

Define how to walk the path 

final ArrayList<RelationshipType> orderedPathContext = new ArrayList<RelationshipType>();
orderedPathContext.add( REL1 );
orderedPathContext.add( withName( "REL2" ) );
orderedPathContext.add( withName( "REL3" ) );
TraversalDescription td = db.traversalDescription()
        .evaluator( new Evaluator()
        {
            @Override
            public Evaluation evaluate( final Path path )
            {
                if ( path.length() == 0 )
                {
                    return Evaluation.EXCLUDE_AND_CONTINUE;
                }
                RelationshipType expectedType = orderedPathContext.get( path.length() - 1 );
                boolean isExpectedType = path.lastRelationship()
                        .isType( expectedType );
                boolean included = path.length() == orderedPathContext.size() && isExpectedType;
                boolean continued = path.length() < orderedPathContext.size() && isExpectedType;
                return Evaluation.of( included, continued );
            }
        } )
        .uniqueness( Uniqueness.NODE_PATH );

Note that we set the uniqueness to Uniqueness.NODE_PATH as we want to be able to revisit the same node dureing the traversal, but not the same path.

Perform the traversal and print the result 

Traverser traverser = td.traverse( A );
PathPrinter pathPrinter = new PathPrinter( "name" );
for ( Path path : traverser )
{
    output += Paths.pathToString( path, pathPrinter );
}

Which will output:

(A)--[REL1]-->(B)--[REL2]-->(C)--[REL3]-->(D)

In this case we use a custom class to format the path output. This is how it’s done:

static class PathPrinter implements Paths.PathDescriptor<Path>
{
    private final String nodePropertyKey;

    public PathPrinter( String nodePropertyKey )
    {
        this.nodePropertyKey = nodePropertyKey;
    }

    @Override
    public String nodeRepresentation( Path path, Node node )
    {
        return "(" + node.getProperty( nodePropertyKey, "" ) + ")";
    }

    @Override
    public String relationshipRepresentation( Path path, Node from, Relationship relationship )
    {
        String prefix = "--", suffix = "--";
        if ( from.equals( relationship.getEndNode() ) )
        {
            prefix = "<--";
        }
        else
        {
            suffix = "-->";
        }
        return prefix + "[" + relationship.getType().name() + "]" + suffix;
    }
}

Figure 32.4. Social network data model

The data model for a social network is pretty simple: Persons with names and StatusUpdates with timestamped text. These entities are then connected by specific relationships.

The StatusUpdate list for a Person is a linked list. The head of the list (the most recent status) is found by following status. Each subsequent StatusUpdate is connected by next.

Here’s an example where Andreas Kollegger micro-blogged his way to work in the morning:

To read the status updates, we can create a traversal, like so:

TraversalDescription traversal = graphDb().traversalDescription()
        .depthFirst()
        .relationships( NEXT );

This gives us a traverser that will start at one StatusUpdate, and will follow the chain of updates until they run out. Traversers are lazy loading, so it’s performant even when dealing with thousands of statuses — they are not loaded until we actually consume them.

Once we have friends, and they have status messages, we might want to read our friends status' messages, in reverse time order — latest first. To do this, we go through these steps:

Animated, the sequence looks like this.

The code looks like:

PositionedIterator<StatusUpdate> first = statuses.get(0);
StatusUpdate returnVal = first.current();

if ( !first.hasNext() )
{
    statuses.remove( 0 );
}
else
{
    first.next();
    sort();
}

return returnVal;