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Graph Queries

This page provides an example of how to make graph queries.

Querying graphs​

Storing (and retrieving) a graph is one thing, but the actual problems only begin when we want to query information about a graph.

Finding the neighbours of a vertex is one crucial question one might have about a graph (or relation, which is the same thing). However, when we deal with graphs (or relations) in practice, we usually have a lot more questions, here we just mention a few that come to mind:

  1. Find all neighbours of a vertex only using edges with a given property or label.
  2. Find all neighbours of a vertex with a given property or label.
  3. Find all paths with a fixed length L in the graph starting at some given vertex.
  4. Find the shortest (or lightest when working with weights) path from vertex V to vertex W.
  5. Find the distances between any two vertices in the graph.
  6. Perform a depth first search for some vertex starting at a given vertex.
  7. Perform a breadth first search for some vertex starting at a given vertex.
  8. Find a minimal spanning tree for the graph.
  9. Perform any map-reduce like computation as is possible in the Pregel framework by Google, for example “Pagerank” or “Find connected components”.
  10. Solve the traveling salesman problem in the graph.

GDN provides several Graph Functions for working with edges and vertices, to analyze them and their relations.

Dataset​

Create a document collection named cities. Add a Geo Index to the collection cities with Fields location and Geo JSON set to true. To populate the cities collection, execute the following query:

LET c = [
    {"_key": "sanfrancisco", "location": [-122.416667, 37.783333]},
    {"_key": "newyork", "location": [-74.0059, 40.7127]},
    {"_key": "detroit", "location": [-83.045833, 42.331389]},
    {"_key": "paris", "location": [2.3508, 48.8567]},
    {"_key": "dublin", "location": [-6.260278, 53.349722]},
    {"_key": "singapore", "location": [103.8, 1.3]},
    {"_key": "houston", "location": [-95.383056, 29.762778]},
    {"_key": "seattle", "location": [-122.333056, 47.609722]}
]
FOR city IN c
    INSERT city IN cities

Create an edge collection named flights. To populate the flights collection, execute the following query:

LET e = [
    {"_from": "cities/sanfrancisco", "_to": "cities/singapore", "distance": 13600},
    {"_from": "cities/sanfrancisco", "_to": "cities/newyork", "distance": 4000},
    {"_from": "cities/sanfrancisco", "_to": "cities/detroit", "distance": 3300},
    {"_from": "cities/sanfrancisco", "_to": "cities/houston", "distance": 2600},
    {"_from": "cities/detroit", "_to": "cities/sanfrancisco", "distance": 3300},
    {"_from": "cities/detroit", "_to": "cities/newyork", "distance": 800},
    {"_from": "cities/newyork", "_to": "cities/sanfrancisco", "distance": 4000},
    {"_from": "cities/newyork", "_to": "cities/detroit", "distance": 800},
    {"_from": "cities/newyork", "_to": "cities/dublin", "distance": 5100},
    {"_from": "cities/newyork", "_to": "cities/paris", "distance": 5800},
    {"_from": "cities/newyork", "_to": "cities/houston", "distance": 2300},
    {"_from": "cities/dublin", "_to": "cities/newyork", "distance": 5100},
    {"_from": "cities/dublin", "_to": "cities/paris", "distance": 800},
    {"_from": "cities/paris", "_to": "cities/newyork", "distance": 5800},
    {"_from": "cities/paris", "_to": "cities/dublin", "distance": 800},
    {"_from": "cities/paris", "_to": "cities/singapore", "distance": 10700},
    {"_from": "cities/singapore", "_to": "cities/sanfrancisco", "distance": 13600},
    {"_from": "cities/singapore", "_to": "cities/paris", "distance": 10700},
    {"_from": "cities/houston", "_to": "cities/sanfrancisco", "distance": 2600},
    {"_from": "cities/houston", "_to": "cities/newyork", "distance": 2300}
]
FOR edge IN e
    INSERT edge IN flights

Create a graph named airline with and edges in flights and both from and to vertices in cities.

Queries​

Get all cities with a direct flight to New York:

WITH cities
     FOR city IN INBOUND "cities/newyork" flights
     RETURN city

Shortest path​

Get the shortest path from San Francisco to Paris:

WITH cities
     LET path = (
    FOR city IN OUTBOUND SHORTEST_PATH "cities/sanfrancisco" TO "cities/paris"
        GRAPH "airline"
        OPTIONS {"weightAttribute": "distance"}
        RETURN city
     )
     RETURN path

Get the distance on the shortest path from San Francisco to Paris:​

WITH cities
     LET path = (
    FOR city, e IN OUTBOUND SHORTEST_PATH "cities/sanfrancisco" TO "cities/paris"
        GRAPH "airline"
        OPTIONS {"weightAttribute": "distance"}
        RETURN e.distance
    )
    RETURN SUM(path)

Nearest cities​

Get the 2 nearest cities to a specified latitude and longitude.

FOR loc IN NEAR(cities, 53.35, -6.26, 2, "distance")
RETURN {
    name: loc._key,
    latitude: loc.location[1],
    longitude: loc.location[0],
    distance: loc.distance / 1000
    }

Cities within a given distance​

Get the cities that are no more than 2500km away from houston.

LET city = DOCUMENT("cities/houston")
FOR loc IN WITHIN(cities, city.location[1], city.location[0], 2500 * 1000, "distance")
RETURN {
    name: loc._key,
    latitude: loc.location[1],
    longitude: loc.location[0],
    distance: loc.distance / 1000
    }