19 Mar 2018

Neo4j: Using the Neo4j Import Tool with the Neo4j Desktop

Last week as part of a modelling and import webinar I showed how to use the Neo4j Import Tool to create a graph of the Yelp Open Dataset:

Afterwards I realised that I didn’t show how to use the tool if you already have an existing database in place so this post will show how to do that.

Imagine we have a Neo4j Desktop project that looks like this:

We run the Neo4j Import Tool from the command line and can find it by clicking 'Manage' and then selecting the 'Terminal' menu:

If we run the following command we can see that there’s already an existing database:

$ ls -lh data/databases/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  38 markneedham  staff   1.2K Mar 19 20:46 graph.db

We’ll create the database in the yelp.db directory by running the following command:

export DATA=/Users/markneedham/projects/yelp-graph-algorithms/data/

./bin/neo4j-admin import \
    --mode=csv \
    --database=yelp.db \
    --nodes:Business $DATA/business_header.csv,$DATA/business.csv \
    --nodes:Category $DATA/category_header.csv,$DATA/category.csv \
    --nodes:User $DATA/user_header.csv,$DATA/user.csv \
    --nodes:Review $DATA/review_header.csv,$DATA/review.csv \
    --nodes:City $DATA/city_header.csv,$DATA/city.csv \
    --nodes:Area $DATA/area_header.csv,$DATA/area.csv \
    --nodes:Country $DATA/country_header.csv,$DATA/country.csv \
    --relationships:IN_CATEGORY $DATA/business_IN_CATEGORY_category_header.csv,$DATA/business_IN_CATEGORY_category.csv \
    --relationships:FRIENDS $DATA/user_FRIENDS_user_header.csv,$DATA/user_FRIENDS_user.csv \
    --relationships:WROTE $DATA/user_WROTE_review_header.csv,$DATA/user_WROTE_review.csv \
    --relationships:REVIEWS $DATA/review_REVIEWS_business_header.csv,$DATA/review_REVIEWS_business.csv \
    --relationships:IN_CITY $DATA/business_IN_CITY_city_header.csv,$DATA/business_IN_CITY_city.csv \
    --relationships:IN_AREA $DATA/city_IN_AREA_area_header.csv,$DATA/city_IN_AREA_area.csv \
    --relationships:IN_COUNTRY $DATA/area_IN_COUNTRY_country_header.csv,$DATA/area_IN_COUNTRY_country.csv \
    --ignore-missing-nodes=true \
    --multiline-fields=true

Neo4j version: 3.3.4
Importing the contents of these files into /Users/markneedham/Library/Application Support/Neo4j Desktop/Application/neo4jDatabases/database-a4609400-daa6-48c3-a992-5c2637a43a8c/installation-3.3.4/data/databases/yelp.db:

...

IMPORT DONE in 11m 35s 798ms.
Imported:
  6764794 nodes
  60993597 relationships
  24574170 properties

Now we need to go to the Settings tab, uncomment the dbms.active_database=graph.db line, and point it at our Yelp database:

When we press apply we’ll be prompted to restart the database and once we do that we’ll be ready to explore the Yelp dataset.

I’ve written up more instructions explaining how to generate the CSV files in the yelp-graph-algorithms repository.

About the author

I'm currently working on short form content at ClickHouse. I publish short 5 minute videos showing how to solve data problems on YouTube @LearnDataWithMark. I previously worked on graph analytics at Neo4j, where I also co-authored the O'Reilly Graph Algorithms Book with Amy Hodler.