This guide walks you through the process of using Spring Data Neo4j to build an application that stores data in and retrieves it from Neo4j, a graph-based database.
You will use Neo4j’s NoSQL graph-based data store to build an embedded Neo4j server, store entities and relationships, and develop queries.
You can use this pre-initialized project and click Generate to download a ZIP file. This project is configured to fit the examples in this tutorial.
To manually initialize the project:
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Navigate to https://start.spring.io. This service pulls in all the dependencies you need for an application and does most of the setup for you.
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Choose either Gradle or Maven and the language you want to use. This guide assumes that you chose Java.
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Click Dependencies and select Spring Data Neo4j.
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Click Generate.
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Download the resulting ZIP file, which is an archive of a web application that is configured with your choices.
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If your IDE has the Spring Initializr integration, you can complete this process from your IDE. |
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You can also fork the project from Github and open it in your IDE or other editor. |
Before you can build this application, you need to set up a Neo4j server.
Neo4j has an open source server you can install for free.
On a Mac that has Homebrew installed, run the following command:
$ brew install neo4j
For other options, visit https://neo4j.com/download/community-edition/.
Once installed, launch it with its default settings by running the following command:
$ neo4j start
You should see output similar to the following:
Starting Neo4j. Started neo4j (pid 96416). By default, it is available at http://localhost:7474/ There may be a short delay until the server is ready. See /usr/local/Cellar/neo4j/3.0.6/libexec/logs/neo4j.log for current status.
By default, Neo4j has a username and password of neo4j and neo4j. However, it requires
that the new account password be changed. To do so, run the following command:
curl -v -u neo4j:neo4j POST localhost:7474/user/neo4j/password -H "Content-type:application/json" -d "{\"password\":\"secret\"}"
This changes the password from neo4j to secret — something to NOT do in production!
With that step completed, you should be ready to run the rest of this guide.
Neo4j captures entities and their relationships, with both aspects being of equal
importance. Imagine you are modeling a system where you store a record for each person.
However, you also want to track a person’s co-workers (teammates in this example). With
Spring Data Neo4j, you can capture all that with some simple annotations, as the following
listing (in src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/Person.java) shows:
link:complete/src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/Person.java[role=include]Here you have a Person class that has only one attribute: name.
The Person class is annotated with @NodeEntity. When Neo4j stores it, a new node is
created. This class also has an id marked @GraphId. Neo4j uses @GraphId internally
to track the data.
The next important piece is the set of teammates. It is a simple Set<Person> but is
marked as @Relationship. This means that every member of this set is expected to also
exist as a separate Person node. Note how the direction is set to UNDIRECTED. This
means that when you query the TEAMMATE relationship, Spring Data Neo4j ignores the
direction of the relationship.
With the worksWith() method, you can easily link people together.
Finally, you have a convenient toString() method to print out the person’s name and that
person’s co-workers.
Spring Data Neo4j is focused on storing data in Neo4j. But it inherits functionality from the Spring Data Commons project, including the ability to derive queries. Essentially, you need not learn the query language of Neo4j. Instead, you can write a handful of methods and let the queries be written for you.
To see how this works, create an interface that queries Person nodes. The following
listing (in src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/PersonRepository.java) shows
such a query:
link:complete/src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/PersonRepository.java[role=include]PersonRepository extends the Neo4jRepository interface and plugs in the type on which
it operates: Person. This interface comes with many operations, including standard CRUD
(create, read, update, and delete) operations.
But you can define other queries by declaring their method signatures. In this case, you
added findByName, which seeks nodes of type Person and finds the one that matches on
name. You also have findByTeammatesName, which looks for a Person node, drills into
each entry of the teammates field, and matches based on the teammate’s name.
Neo4j Community Edition requires credentials to access it. You can configure these
credential by setting a couple of properties (in
src/main/resources/application.properties), as the following listing shows:
link:complete/src/main/resources/application.properties[role=include]
This includes the default username (neo4j) and the newly set password we picked earlier
(secret).
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Warning
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Do NOT store real credentials in your source repository. Instead, configure them in your runtime using Spring Boot’s property overrides. |
With this in place, you can wire this up and see what it looks like!
Spring Initializr creates a simple class for the application. The following listing shows
the class that Initializr created for this example (in
src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/AccessingDataNeo4jApplication.java):
link:initial/src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/AccessingDataNeo4jApplication.java[role=include]Spring Boot automatically handles those repositories as long as they are included in the
same package (or a sub-package) of your @SpringBootApplication class. For more control
over the registration process, you can use the @EnableNeo4jRepositories annotation.
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By default, @EnableNeo4jRepositories scans the current package for any interfaces
that extend one of Spring Data’s repository interfaces. You can use its
basePackageClasses=MyRepository.class to safely tell Spring Data Neo4j to scan a
different root package by type if your project layout has multiple projects and it does
not find your repositories.
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Logging output is displayed. The service should be up and running within a few seconds.
Now autowire the instance of PersonRepository that you defined earlier. Spring Data
Neo4j dynamically implements that interface and plugs in the needed query code to meet the
interface’s obligations.
The main method uses Spring Boot’s SpringApplication.run() to launch the
application and invoke the CommandLineRunner that builds the relationships.
In this case, you create three local Person instances: Greg, Roy, and Craig.
Initially, they only exist in memory. Note that no one is a teammate of anyone (yet).
At first, you find Greg, indicate that he works with Roy and Craig, and then persist him
again. Remember, the teammate relationship was marked as UNDIRECTED (that is,
bidirectional). That means that Roy and Craig have been updated as well.
That is why when you need to update Roy. It is critical that you fetch that record from Neo4j first. You need the latest status on Roy’s teammates before adding Craig to the list.
Why is there no code that fetches Craig and adds any relationships? Because you already have it! Greg earlier tagged Craig as a teammate, and so did Roy. That means there is no need to update Craig’s relationships again. You can see it as you iterate over each team member and print their information to the console.
Finally, check out that other query where you look backwards, answering the question of "Who works with whom?"
The following listing shows the finished AccessingDataNeo4jApplication class (at
src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/AccessingDataNeo4jApplication.java):
link:complete/src/main/java/com/example/accessingdataneo4j/AccessingDataNeo4jApplication.java[role=include]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-guides/getting-started-macros/main/build_an_executable_jar_mainhead.adoc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-guides/getting-started-macros/main/build_an_executable_jar_with_both.adoc
You should see something similar to the following listing (with other stuff, such as queries, as well):
Before linking up with Neo4j... Greg's teammates => [] Roy's teammates => [] Craig's teammates => [] Lookup each person by name... Greg's teammates => [Roy, Craig] Roy's teammates => [Greg, Craig] Craig's teammates => [Roy, Greg]
You can see from the output that (initially) no one is connected by any relationship. Then, after you add people, they are tied together. Finally, you can see the handy query that looks up people based on teammate.
Congratulations! You just set up an embedded Neo4j server, stored some simple related entities, and developed some quick queries.
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If you want to expose Neo4j repositories with a hypermedia-based RESTful front end with little effort, read Accessing Neo4j Data with REST. |