/neo4j-apoc-procedures

Awesome Procedures On Cypher for Neo4j 3.x - codenamed "apoc"                     If you like it, please ★ above ⇧            

Primary LanguageJavaApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

Awesome Procedures for Neo4j 3.5.x

Introduction

apoc

Neo4j 3.x introduced the concept of user-defined procedures and functions. Those are custom implementations of certain functionality, that can’t be (easily) expressed in Cypher itself. They are implemented in Java and can be easily deployed into your Neo4j instance, and then be called from Cypher directly.

The APOC library consists of many (about 450) procedures and functions to help with many different tasks in areas like data integration, graph algorithms or data conversion.

License

Apache License 2.0

"APOC" Name history

Apoc was the technician and driver on board of the Nebuchadnezzar in the Matrix movie. He was killed by Cypher.

APOC was also the first bundled A Package Of Component for Neo4j in 2009.

APOC also stands for "Awesome Procedures On Cypher"

Installation: With Neo4j Desktop

APOC is easily installed with Neo4j Desktop, after creating your database just go to the "Manage" screen and the "Plugins" tab. Then click "Install" in the APOC box and you’re done.

desktop apoc

Feedback

Please provide feedback and report bugs as GitHub issues or join the Neo4j Community Forum and ask in the APOC & Procedures category.

Calling Procedures & Functions within Cypher

User defined Functions can be used in any expression or predicate, just like built-in functions.

Procedures can be called stand-alone with CALL procedure.name();

But you can also integrate them into your Cypher statements which makes them so much more powerful.

Load JSON example
WITH 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/neo4j-contrib/neo4j-apoc-procedures/{branch}/src/test/resources/person.json' AS url

CALL apoc.load.json(url) YIELD value as person

MERGE (p:Person {name:person.name})
   ON CREATE SET p.age = person.age, p.children = size(person.children)

APOC Procedures & Functions Overview

All included procedures are listed in the overview in the documentation and detailed in subsequent sections.

Built in Help

apoc help apoc

call apoc.help('keyword')

lists name, description, signature, roles, based on keyword

Detailed Feature Documentation

See the APOC User Guide for documentation of each of the major features of the library, including data import/export, graph refactoring, data conversion, and more.

Procedure & Function Signatures

To call procedures correctly, you need to know their parameter names, types and positions. And for YIELDing their results, you have to know the output column names and types.

INFO:The signatures are shown in error messages, if you use a procedure incorrectly.

You can see the procedures signature in the output of CALL apoc.help("name")

CALL apoc.help("dijkstra")

The signature is always name : : TYPE, so in this case:

apoc.algo.dijkstra
 (startNode :: NODE?, endNode :: NODE?,
   relationshipTypesAndDirections :: STRING?, weightPropertyName :: STRING?)
:: (path :: PATH?, weight :: FLOAT?)
Table 1. Parameter Explanation
Name Type

Procedure Parameters

startNode

Node

endNode

Node

relationshipTypesAndDirections

String

weightPropertyName

String

Output Return Columns

path

Path

weight

Float

Manual Installation: Download latest release

Since APOC relies in some places on Neo4j’s internal APIs you need to use the matching APOC version for your Neo4j installaton. Make sure that the first two version numbers match between Neo4j and APOC.

Go to the latest release for Neo4j version 3.5 and download the binary jar to place into your $NEO4J_HOME/plugins folder.

You can find all releases here.

Manual Configuration

Warning

Procedures that use internal APIs have to be allowed in $NEO4J_HOME/conf/neo4j.conf with, e.g. dbms.security.procedures.unrestricted=apoc.* for security reasons.

If you want to use this via docker, you need to amend -e NEO4J_dbms_security_procedures_unrestricted=apoc.\\\* to your docker run …​ command. The three backslashes are necessary to prevent wildcard expansions.

You can also whitelist procedures and functions in general to be loaded using: dbms.security.procedures.whitelist=apoc.coll.*,apoc.load.*

Version Compatibility Matrix

Since APOC relies in some places on Neo4j’s internal APIs you need to use the right APOC version for your Neo4j installaton.

APOC uses a consistent versioning scheme: <neo4j-version>.<apoc> version. The trailing <apoc> part of the version number will be incremented with every apoc release.

apoc version neo4j version

3.5.0.4

3.5.6 (3.5.x)

3.4.0.6

3.4.12 (3.4.x)

3.3.0.4

3.3.6 (3.3.x)

3.2.3.6

3.2.9 (3.2.x)

3.1.3.9

3.1.7 (3.1.x)

3.0.8.6

3.0.5-3.0.9 (3.0.x)

3.5.0.0

3.5.0-beta01

3.4.0.2

3.4.5

3.3.0.3

3.3.5

3.2.3.5

3.2.3

3.1.3.8

3.1.5

Get APOC Version

To know your current apoc version you can use the function :

RETURN apoc.version();

Using APOC with the Neo4j Docker image

The Neo4j Docker image allows to supply a volume for the /plugins folder. Download the APOC release matching your Neo4j version to local folder plugins and provide it as a data volume:

mkdir plugins
pushd plugins
wget https://github.com/neo4j-contrib/neo4j-apoc-procedures/releases/download/3.5.0.4/apoc-3.5.0.4-all.jar
popd
docker run --rm -e NEO4J_AUTH=none -p 7474:7474 -v $PWD/plugins:/plugins -p 7687:7687 neo4j:3.5

If you want to pass custom apoc config to your Docker instance, you can use environment variables, like here:

docker run \
    -p 7474:7474 -p 7687:7687 \
    -v $PWD/data:/data -v $PWD/plugins:/plugins \
    --name neo4j-apoc \
    -e NEO4J_apoc_export_file_enabled=true \
    -e NEO4J_apoc_import_file_enabled=true \
    -e NEO4J_apoc_import_file_use__neo4j__config=true \
    neo4j

If you want to allow APOC’s procedures that use internal APIs, you need to amend -e NEO4J_dbms_security_procedures_unrestricted=apoc.\\\* to your docker run …​ command. The three backslashes are necessary to prevent wildcard expansions.

Build & install the current development branch from source

git clone http://github.com/neo4j-contrib/neo4j-apoc-procedures
cd neo4j-apoc-procedures
./gradlew shadow
cp build/libs/apoc-<version>-all.jar $NEO4J_HOME/plugins/
$NEO4J_HOME/bin/neo4j restart

A full build including running the tests can be run by ./gradlew build.