Cypher Fundamentals-Finding Relationships
QUIZ
Finding Relationships
Finding relationships
OUR GOAL
As a movie fanaticI would like to find movies for a particular actor
So that I can watch a movie this evening
In the previous lesson, we used the MATCH
clause to find the node in our database that represented Tom Hanks.
MATCH (p:Person {name: 'Tom Hanks'})
RETURN p
We can extend the pattern in the MATCH
clause to traverse through all relationships with a type of ACTED_IN to any node. Our domain model shows that the ACTED_IN relationship goes in an outgoing direction from the Person node so we can add the direction in our pattern. We often refer to this as a traversal.
MATCH (p:Person {name: 'Tom Hanks'})-[:ACTED_IN]->()
Our data model dictates that the node at the other end of that relationship will be Movie node, so we don’t necessarily need to specify the :Movie label in the node - instead we will use the variable m.
MATCH (p:Person {name: 'Tom Hanks'})-[:ACTED_IN]->(m)
RETURN m.title
This code returns the titles of all moves that Tom Hanks acted in.
If our graph had different labels, for example Television and Movie nodes this query would have returned all Television and Movie nodes that Tom Hanks acted in. That is, if we had multiple types of nodes at the end of the ACTED_IN relationships in our graph, we could make sure that we only return movies.
MATCH (p:Person {name: 'Tom Hanks'})-[:ACTED_IN]->(m:Movie)
RETURN m.title
Because our graph only has Movie nodes that have incoming ACTED_IN relationships, this query returns the exact same results as the previous query.
Check your understanding
1. Specifying the relationship direction
Say we wrote our query above differently and started with the Movie node. Use the dropdown below to select the correct direction for the query.
Once you have selected your option, click the Check Results query button to continue.
MATCH (m:Movie)(p:Person)
RETURN m.title, p.name
2. Query using a pattern
Which MATCH
clauses will return the names of the directors of the movie, The Matrix?
-
MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'The Matrix'})<-[:DIRECTED]-(p:Person) RETURN p.name
MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'The Matrix'})--(p:Person) RETURN p.name
MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'The Matrix'})<-[:DIRECTED]-(p) RETURN p.name
MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'The Matrix'})--(p:Director) RETURN p.name