DortDB - Cypher Language Partial Implementation

This package is a language plugin for DortDB. It adds support for Cypher data selection queries.

Data adapter

The default data adapter implementation allows queries against Graphology graphs. The language can be configured with the name of the default graph to query.

const lang = Cypher({
  defaultGraph: 'myGraph',
});

It is also possible to specify the queried graph in the query itself:

FROM myOtherGraph
MATCH (n)
RETURN n

Differences between DortDB and openCypher

The DortDB Cypher language is parsed with an LALR(1) parser, which is not powerful enough for the original openCypher grammar, as it has only a limited lookahead. The grammar contains constructs that would be ambiguous during parsing. Certain patterns are, therefore, parsed a certain way, even though it means that some otherwise valid queries will fail.

Node patterns or parenthesized expressions

If the input can be interpreted as either the start of a node pattern or a parenthesized expression, the parser will always choose the node pattern.

• (a) is a node pattern
• (a:Label) is a node pattern
• ({prop: value)} is a node pattern
• ($param) is a node pattern

Because of this, (a:Label = true) will cause a parsing error, because it is already considered a node pattern, even though it would be a valid expression in the original grammar, checking whether the a variable has the Label label. The same goes for (prop: value.prop). More complex parenthesized expressions starting with a variable or a parameter are not affected, for example, ($param = true) or (a + a) are valid expressions. This should not cause any issues, as it is always possible to interpret the input as expressions by removing the parentheses. The label check expression a:Label has the highest precedence, so parentheses would not do anything anyway, and the rest are simply parentheses around atomic expressions.

Operators

The following symbol combinations are considered a part of relationship patterns and will not be interpreted as operators. If necessary, it is always possible to clarify the meaning by adding parentheses.

• <-[ (e.g., it will never be parsed as a comparison like a < -[b])
• <--
• --
• -[

List/pattern comprehension or list literals

Cypher includes special syntax for list comprehension and pattern comprehension.

RETURN [x IN range(0,10) WHERE x % 2 = 0 | x^3] AS result

MATCH (a:Person)
RETURN [(a)-[:KNOWS]->(b) WHERE b:Person | b.name] AS friends

MATCH (a {id: 1})
RETURN [path = (a)-[:KNOWS*]->(b) | size(path)] AS foafDistances

If the input can be interpreted as either the start of a list/pattern comprehension or a list literal, the parser will always choose the list/pattern comprehension. More specifically, if the input starts with:

• [variable IN
• [variable = (pattern)

Then it is no longer possible to interpret it as a list literal (even though in the original grammar, [variable IN list1, variable IN list2] would be a valid list literal containing two booleans).

Reserved words

In addition to the regular reserved words, the following words need to be escaped before they can be used as identifiers.

• COUNT
• ANY
• NONE
• SINGLE