What are the neo4j naming conventions?

Question

I'm curious about naming conventions in neo4j.

I noticed in their examples that relationship names where capitalized, e.g.

left-[r:KNOWS]->right

Is that the convention? Is neo4j case sensitive in relationship names? Are there other naming conventions around index names and property names?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 20 '12 at 23:23

That is the convention. I personally use lower case relationship types, and yes, it is case-sensitive. With underscores.

Usually, people use underscores for index names as well, and they're usually lower case, and also case-sensitive.

Also, something to remember: if you don't specify direction while creating, the default is left<--right. Not intuitive for me, but now I just specify direction always.

For the properties, I think most people use JSON style conventions: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/jsoncstyleguide.xml#Key_Names_in_JSON_Maps

I've also seen underscores for properties, so I guess it goes either way. Just be consistent!

If you want spaces, you can. You need to enclose the relationship type in backticks though. The syntax is often used in MySQL for object names with spaces. — ADTC, May 12 '16 at 17:22

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 16 '16 at 09:55

Yes, the convention for relationship names is to have them ALL_UPPERCASE. All names in Neo4j are case-sensitive (labels, relationships, properties, ...)

Keep in mind that this is a convention, not a requirement. The most important part in any project is consistency. Use a coding style and stick to it throughout!

Neo4j naming convention:

Labels: UpperCamelCase (a.k.a. PascalCase)
Relationships: CAPITALIZED_WITH_UNDERSCORE
Property key names: lowerCamelCase or snake_case

Cypher examples:

CREATE (:Person {name:"Anne"})-[:MANAGES {start_date:20121112}]->(:WorkGroup {name:"Dev"});

Alternatively:

CREATE (:Person {name:"Anne"})-[:MANAGES {startDate:20121112}]->(:WorkGroup {name:"Dev"});

References:

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 18 '14 at 14:38

Could be easier to bring everything to upper case or lower case using LOWER() and UPPER() string functions

1- Let's suppose I have a node with a property name = 'name' in lower case, to find it you need to match againt the exact string

Query:
CYPHER 2.0
START n=node(*)
WHERE n.name= "name"
RETURN id(n)

id(n)
5

Query took 3 ms and returned 1 rows.

otherwise you will not find it :

Query:
CYPHER 2.0
START n=node(*)
WHERE n.name= "Name"
RETURN id(n)


Query took 4 ms and returned no rows.

But, we can match it using string function LOWER():

CYPHER 2.0
START n=node(*)
WHERE n.name= LOWER("Name")
RETURN id(n)

id(n)
5

Query took 4 ms and returned 1 rows.

2- With node property entered with arbitrary string case ex: "NaMe", to match against :

START n=node(*)
WHERE LOWER(n.name)= "name"
RETURN id(n)

id(n)
8

Query took 5 ms and returned 1 rows.

What are the neo4j naming conventions?

3 Answers3